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This paper aims to highlight the relevance of examining education and skill job‐worker mismatches as two different, although simultaneous, phenomena of the labor market. Most previous literature does not take into account skill mismatch, and a number of papers deal with both kinds of mismatches as equivalent.

Spanish data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) survey for the year 2001 are used to examine the degree of statistical association between both education and skill mismatches, and to estimate wage equations as well as job satisfaction equations, considering satisfaction with pay, with the type of job and overall job satisfaction, in order to analyze the consequences of both types of mismatches from the workers’ viewpoint.

The statistical analysis shows that education and skill mismatches are weakly related in the Spanish labor market. The econometric analysis reveals that skill mismatches appear as key determinants of workers’ job satisfaction, while education mismatches have much weaker impacts, if any, on workers’ job satisfaction; however, both skill and education mismatches have negative impacts on wages.

The analysis points out that the research strategy that considers education mismatch as a proxy for the study of the effects of skill mismatch is rather weak because skill and education mismatches appear to capture different aspects of the accuracy of the job‐worker pairing, and, therefore, they have separate consequences for workers, both in monetary and non‐monetary terms. Skill mismatches are perceived by workers as a much more relevant problem than education mismatches. The wage and job satisfaction consequences of skill mismatches are strongly negative; to the contrary, education mismatches show much weaker effects.

The paper emphasizes that neglecting the effects of skill mismatch along with those of education mismatch in the analysis of the monetary and non‐monetary consequences of inadequate job‐worker pairing can lead to erroneous interpretations of the facts.

The purpose of this paper is to propose an improved concept of educational mismatch that combines a statistical measure of over- and undereducation with the worker’s self-assessment of skill utilization. The novelty of this measurement approach consists in identifying the vertical and horizontal nature of skills mismatch, that is, a mismatch in which skills are either over/underutilized or not utilized.

Cross-sectional data from the Swiss Household Panel survey for the years 1999 and 2004 are used to determine the true extent of educational mismatch among workers. Moroever, different versions of the Duncan and Hoffman wage equation are estimated depending on whether basic or alternative measures of educational mismatch are included.

The empirical analyses provide the following results: first, at least two-third of the statistically defined overeducated workers perceive their skills as adequate for the job they hold and are then apparently overeducated; second, overeducated workers whose skills are not related to the job do not receive any payoff to years of surplus education; and third, apparently overeducated workers have similar wage returns compared to others with the same schooling level but who are statistically matched. All in all, these findings confirm that most of those overeducated according to the statistical measure have unobserved skills that allow them to work in a job for which they are well-matched.

The paper indicates the need to consider both vertical and horizontal skill mismatches when measuring educational mismatch in the labour market. In that way, it is possible to account for worker heterogeneity in skills whose omission may generate biased estimates of the incidence and wage effects of over- and undereducation.

This paper aims to understand the development track of skills mismatch research and discover the hidden internal connections between literature.

The authors gathered data through scientometric quantitative analysis using CiteSpace. Specifically, this article applied basic analysis, journal cocitation analysis (JCA), author cocitation analysis (ACA) and document cocitation analysis (DCA), cluster analysis, citation burstness detection, scientific research cooperation analysis and coconcurrence analysis of keywords of 3,125 documents from Web of Science core collections for the period 2000–2020.

Through the document cocitation analysis and the keywords' co-occurrence, this article identifies influential scholars, documents, research institutions, journals and research hotspots in research on the skills mismatch phenomenon. The results showed that the publications had ballooned, and the phenomenon has become an interdisciplinary research subject. The USA and Finland remain the main contributors, which is attributed to their high-yield institutions such as the University of Helsinki, the University of Witwatersrand, the University of Washington and so on. While the African continent lacks research on skills mismatch even with the continent’s effort to overcome such a crucial issue. The paper presents an in-depth analysis of skills and educational mismatch issues to better understand the evolutionary trajectory of the collective knowledge over the past 20 years and highlight the areas of active pursuit.

The authors only used Web of Science core collection to collect data; however, they can added Scopus indexed database as well to extend the research trends and explore more new research hot topics to solve the skills mismatch phenomenon.

The scientometric analysis is of great significance for identifying the potential relationship between the literature and investigating the knowledge evolution of skills mismatch research. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the International Labor Organization and the World Health Organization are the giants who are mostly concerned of the mismatch skills phenomenon. Researchers can refer to this study to understand the status quo, gaps and research trends to deal with the skills mismatch issue.

This paper aims to extend the scope of previous studies on education-occupation mismatch to explicitly focus on the role high school track choices have on the risk of being mismatched in the labor market.

The paper uses the most exhaustive available database regarding the early-career paths of university graduates in Romania. Using a novel matching technique, entropy balancing (EB), our study relies on multinomial logit models and logit regressions to estimate the effect of the completed high school track on the likelihood of being mismatched in the labor market. The empirical analysis focuses on two types of education-occupation mismatches: horizontal and vertical mismatches.

We show that studying a different field in college compared to the completed high school track increases the risk of being skill mismatched in the first job after graduation. Five years after college graduation, the influence of the high school track fades, while being skill mismatched in the first employment plays a more important role. In contrast, we find no evidence that pursuing a college major unrelated to the completed high school track increases the probability of being overeducated. However, being overeducated in the first job increases the risk of being overeducated five years later.

The study brings new reliable evidence on the extent to which high school track choices may contribute to the risk of being mismatched in the labor market.

This paper explores the link between skill and qualification mismatch and labor productivity using cross-country industry data for 19 OECD countries. Utilizing mismatch indicators aggregated from micro-data sourced from the recent OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), the main results suggest that higher skill and qualification mismatch is associated with lower labor productivity, with over-skilling and under-qualification accounting for most of these impacts. A novel result is that higher skill mismatch is associated with lower labor productivity through a less efficient allocation of resources, presumably because when the share of over-skilled workers is higher, more productive firms find it more difficult to attract skilled labor and gain market shares at the expense of less productive firms. At the same time, a higher share of under-qualified workers is associated with both lower allocative efficiency and within-firm productivity – that is, a lower ratio of high productivity to low productivity firms. While differences in managerial quality can potentially account for the relationship between mismatch and within-firm productivity, the paper offers some preliminary insights into the policy factors that might explain the link between skill mismatch and resource allocation.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of labor mismatches on wages and on job satisfaction for the Spanish case, with a distinction been made between educational and skills-related measures of mismatch.

The focus is placed on the usage that the individuals do of their skills in the workplace and different measures of skills use are considered to check the robustness of the results.

Using data from PIAAC, the results suggest that whereas educational mismatch shows greater effects on wages, the effects of labor mismatch on job satisfaction are better explained by the relative use of individual skills in the workplace.

Both educational and skills mismatches are relevant for understanding the economic effects of labor mismatch. Nevertheless, it should be taken into account that educational mismatch is not an accurate proxy for skills mismatch, mainly when the non-monetary effects of labor mismatch are addressed.

There is room to increase workers’ skills utilization in the workplace, which, in turn, would contribute to enhance individual job satisfaction and, consequently, workers productivity.

A process of upgrading in the Spanish labor market would allow to take full advantage of recent investments in education and skills formation done in the country in the last decades.

This study contributes to the literature on labor mismatch by explicitly considering that educational and skills mismatch might reflect different phenomena and by analyzing the effects of both types of mismatches on different labor market outcomes.

Employment and skill mismatch among youth constitute a major obstacle for access to the job market in the Middle East and North African region. The purpose of this paper is to explore factors explaining employment and the perception of the skill-mismatch problem among the youth in Lebanon using a novel data set covering young people aged from 15 to 29. The paper provides a set of empirical insights that help in the design of public policy targeting school-to-work transition.

The authors control for a rich set of youth and household characteristics to jointly estimate the probability of being employed and the likelihood of reporting a skill-mismatch problem. The empirical analysis uses a bivariate probit model where the first equation estimates the employment status while the second estimates the determinants of skill-mismatch perceptions. The bivariate probit model considers the error terms in both equations to be correlated and the model tests for such a correlation. The authors estimate the model recursively by controlling for the employment dummy variable in the skill-mismatch equation since employed youth could be more or less likely to perceive the skill mismatch. The estimation is conducted first over the whole sample of youth, and then it is implemented by gender and region.

The authors find that youth employment is mainly correlated with age, being male, being single, having received vocational training and financial support from parents, living with parents and receiving current education. The skill-mismatch perceptions are mainly driven by being male, being single, having received post-secondary education and belonging to upper and middle social classes. The authors also find that employability level and skill-mismatch problems are jointly determined in the labor market for males and in the core region only.

The paper covers a country that is neglected in the literature on the employment-skill mismatch nexus in the context of school-to-work transition. The study also uses a novel data set focusing on youth. The paper contributes to our understanding of the school-to-work transition in particular and to the youth-to-adulthood transition in general.

The explicit assumption in most literature on educational and skill mismatches is that these mismatches are inherently costly for workers. However, the results in the literature on the effects of underqualification or underskilling on wages and job satisfaction only partly support this hypothesis. Rather than assuming that both skill surpluses and skill deficits are inherently costly for workers, we interpret these mixed findings by taking a learning perspective on skill mismatches. Following the theory of Vygotski on the so-called “zone of proximal development,” we expect that workers who start their job with a small skill deficit, show more skill growth than workers who start in a matching job or workers with a more severe skill deficit. We test this hypothesis using the Cedefop European skills and jobs survey (ESJS) and the results confirm these expectations. Workers learn more from job tasks that are more demanding than if they would work in a job that perfectly matches their initial skill level and this skill growth is largest for those who start with a small skill deficit. The learning opportunities are worst when workers start in a job for which they have a skill surplus. This is reflected in the type of learning activities that workers take up. Workers with a small skill deficit are more often engaged in informal learning activities. Finally, workers who started with a small skill deficit are no less satisfied with their job than workers who started in a well-matched job. We conclude that a skill match is good for workers, but a small skill deficit is even better. This puts some responsibility on employers to keep job tasks and responsibilities at a challenging level for their employees.

Purpose: This chapter aims to analyse the current literature on the supply and demand for skills in the UK labour market to identify key trends and themes around skill mismatch, identify gaps and areas for future research.

Method: Selected articles were analysed to identify key themes and trends in the existing literature.

Findings: The overall finding is that the UK labour market suffers from various forms of widespread skill mismatch, but most particularly in the form of skill shortage. The areas with the most notable skill shortage highlighted in the literature include basic literacy, numeracy and digital; employability including leadership and management; STEM and health-related areas; teaching and training and a range of higher-level skills (including leadership and management, digital and creative, and industry-specific skills in STEM and health-related sectors, financial and business services, technology media and telecommunications, as well as teaching and training). Skill mismatch in the form of skill shortages in these areas is projected to worsen considerably by 2030, with some areas expected to suffer acute shortages by this time. Continued improvements to the education system will help to ensure the pipeline of future workers. However, changes to the education system are unlikely to impact on 80% of the future 2030 workforce who are already working and active in the UK labour market.

Originality/value of paper: The chapter provides a review of key literature in the field and aggregates key findings, so a wider picture of the extent and nature of the UK's skill mismatch challenge can be appreciated.

This paper provides more insight into the assumption of human capital theory that the productivity of job-related training is driven by the improvement of workers’ skills. We analyze the extent to which training and informal learning on the job are related to employee skill development and consider the heterogeneity of this relationship with respect to workers’ skill mismatch at job entry. Using data from the 2014 European Skills and Jobs Survey, we find – as assumed by human capital theory – that employees who participated in training or informal learning show greater improvement of their skills than those who did not. The contribution of informal learning to employee skill development appears to be larger than that of training participation. Nevertheless, both forms of learning are shown to be complementary. This complementarity between training and informal learning is related to a significant additional improvement of workers’ skills. The skill development of workers who were initially underskilled for their job seems to benefit the most from both training and informal learning, whereas the skill development of those who were initially overskilled benefits the least. Work-related learning investments in the latter group seem to be more functional in offsetting skill depreciation than in fostering skill accumulation.