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Educational mismatches constitute negative impacts on labor markets in most countries, Thailand is no exception. The purpose of this paper is to quantify the degree of educational mismatch in Thailand and its impacts on labor market outcomes.

This study analyzes data obtained from Thailand’s Labor Force Survey to estimate the likelihood of horizontal and vertical mismatches and their impacts on labor market outcomes.

Estimation results reveal the existence of a high level of both vertical and horizontal mismatches in the labor market. The vertical mismatch tends to be most prevalent in the case of graduates with degrees in the social sciences, while the existence of the horizontal mismatch is mostly found in the case of graduates with backgrounds in the physical sciences. Samples with a degree in health science seem to be least impacted by both types of mismatch. Education-job mismatches, either vertical or horizontal mismatches, are found to cause negative impacts on workers’ employment. Findings indicate that workers who encountered either horizontal or vertical educational mismatches tended to have lower monthly incomes than did those without such mismatches. Vertical mismatches seemed to result in lower incomes than did the horizontal mismatches. Furthermore, both types of mismatch are found to not have any significant impact on workers’ employability.

Nevertheless, due to different types of mismatches such as skill mismatch or personality mismatch, this paper only quantifies degree mismatch on the context of Thailand only. Nevertheless, different structure of labor market can show different findings.

Both horizontal mismatch and vertical mismatch can be mitigated with strong collaboration system between colleges/universities and employers. Therefore, the government should further promote better cooperation between universities and the private sector (industry-university linkages) by encouraging more exchanges between high-level executives and students of the private sector and higher-education institutes. More opportunities for students to practice their skills in real workplace settings should be provided, and students should also be able to gain credits from participating in such training. In Thailand, at present there are only a few degree programs that require students to complete an internship.

As for social policy recommendations, to reduce both horizontal and vertical mismatches in practices, it is essential that the education sector promote a life-long learning framework that allows workers whose jobs do not match their educational background (or with their educational attainment) to receive the training and develop the skills required by employers.

Comparing to other literature in these areas in which survey data from the authors are relied, this paper, however, uses the Thai Labor Force Survey, which is the national representative sample data set. The results found from this paper are therefore useful to be reliable on implying appropriated policy recommendations.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse and explain the factors contributing to the observed differences in skill mismatches (vertical and horizontal) between natives and immigrants in EU countries.

Using microdata from the 2007 wave of the Adult Education Survey (AES), different probit models are specified and estimated to analyse differences in the probability of each type of skill mismatch between natives and immigrants. Yun’s decomposition method is used to identify the relative contribution of characteristics and returns to explain the differences between the two groups.

Immigrants are more likely to be skill mismatched than natives. The difference is much larger for vertical mismatch, wherein the difference is higher for immigrants coming from non-EU countries than for those coming from other EU countries. The authors find that immigrants from non-EU countries are less valued in EU labour markets than natives with similar characteristics – a result that is not observed for immigrants from EU countries. These results could be related to the limited transferability of human capital acquired in non-EU countries.

The findings suggest that specific programmes to adapt immigrants’ human capital acquired in the home country are required to reduce differences in the incidence of skill mismatch and better integration into EU labour markets.

This research is original, because it distinguishes between horizontal and vertical mismatch – an issue that has not been considered in the literature on differences between native and immigrant workers and due to the wide geographical scope of the analysis, which considers EU and non-EU countries.

This study aims to demonstrate whether the educational mismatch prevalent in society can be overcome by various types of lifelong learning and whether lifelong learning can contribute to job satisfaction.

The participants were 2,559 young Korean employees who graduated from general or specialized vocational high school. This study applied structural equation modeling to verify the mediating effects of lifelong learning on the relationship between educational mismatch and job satisfaction. In addition, this study compared whether the conceptual model results were applied to those who graduated from general school and specialized vocational school through multigroup analysis.

Regarding the horizontal mismatch, the mediating effect of lifelong learning correlated with job satisfaction was significantly measured in all multigroup models, including the conceptual model. Nevertheless, regarding the vertical mismatch, this study confirmed that informal learning influences job satisfaction differently according to the type of high school from which employees graduated. Furthermore, for those who graduated from specialized vocational school, the relationship between vertical mismatch and job satisfaction was significantly indicated. However, there was no influence of informal learning at the workplace.

This study empirically demonstrated the alternative value of lifelong learning in overcoming the preceding educational mismatch. Moreover, the evidence that such lifelong learning effects may vary depending on the vocational education experiences before entering the labor market is valuable.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate vertical and horizontal mismatch between education and current occupation for graduates in four post-communist societies: Hungary, Poland, Lithuania and Slovenia. In this way it contributes to the field by exploring how mechanisms, known from previous studies on western societies, affect job mismatch in emerging market economies.

Two dependent variables are constructed: working in a non-graduate occupation as defined by the ISCO job title depicts vertical mismatch; assessment of the job from the perspective of the fields of study describes horizontal mismatch. Since the dependent variables are dichotomous ones, binary logistic regression models are fitted to the data predicting the incidence of mismatch. Explanatory variables cover mechanisms affecting job mismatch: variation by fields of studies, accumulated work experience during studies, labour market uncertainties during early career, trade off between job safety and job mismatch, persistence of “bad” labour market entry during early career, influence of parental background on school-to-work transition.

The analysis reveals significant differences for study fields in association with occupational specificity of the disciplines. Only study-related work experience seems to be advantageous to find a matching job. Labour market uncertainties increase the probability of job mismatch. Job safety is more important than a matching job.

Mismatch in first occupation has strong and long-lasting effect on the job match even five years after the graduation. The effect of parental background on job mismatch is curvilinear.

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 addresses the relevance of job search methods and strategies in determining vertical mismatch and the risk of underusing skills or knowledge in first jobs amongst graduates from bachelor's and master's programmes in Spain. Support from universities (via internships and career services) is compared to support from public institutions and informal strategies.

The authors use the 2019 University Graduate Job Placement Survey. The dependent variables are estimated with a bivariate probit model with sample selection on a subsample of graduates who were not working at graduation.

Internships and university career employment offices significantly improve the quality of first job matches. Job banks and public examinations also contribute to finding well-matched first positions, while for public employment services, results are mixed. When the job search is not supported by institutions, graduates generally do worse finding their first jobs, particularly when temporary employment agencies are involved. There are also large differences in mismatch risks across fields of study.

If more graduates found their first jobs through internships and university job placement services, educational mismatch rates would decrease substantially. Further collaboration between universities and employers for the provision of high-quality internships may foster their conversion into regular, well-matched jobs. Industrial policies addressed to knowledge-based economic activities would enhance the creation of highly skilled positions. Further orientation towards STEM degrees is required to improve imbalances between supply and demand for graduate labour in Spain.

Evidence about education mismatch among master's degree graduates is very scarce. This paper compares them to bachelor's degree graduates. It addresses two complementary types of education mismatch and takes into account potential self-selection into post-graduation job search.

Education-job mismatches, especially overeducation or vertical mismatch, are generally found to lower the worker’s job satisfaction, which may generate the counter-productive behaviors, such as high rates of absenteeism and turnover in developed countries. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impacts of educational mismatches from their both forms and dimensions (match, overeducation, horizontal mismatch and double mismatch) on the job satisfaction among university graduates in Cambodia.

To deal with the sample selection bias owing to the unobserved job satisfaction of unemployed graduates, this paper applies the Heckman probit model on a survey conducted with 19 higher education institutions in Cambodia.

Results indicate that a half of graduates suffer at least one type of educational mismatch and the both forms of mismatches adversely affect the job satisfaction with the strongest impact from the double mismatch case.

The authors take into account the sample selection bias, but are not able to deal with the unobserved heterogeneity, such as individual competences and preferences. With the panel data, it would be possible to isolate those individual fixed effects.

The findings underline the importance of improvement in the quality of higher education in Cambodia that seems to play a main role in this education-job mismatch problem. Creating the occupational counseling for the high school students would be also helpful to orientate students to the majors strongly needed by the labor market.

This paper focuses on all forms and dimensions of mismatches and takes into account the sample selection bias in the context of a low-income country where the increasing rate of enrollment in higher education seems to be accompanied by an increasing rate of education-job mismatches. Previous research works focused mostly on overeducation and in developed countries.

This study is to examine and develop sector skills strategies and action plans for the textile and apparel (T&A) sector.

The paper used a participatory action qualitative method anchored on the Skills for Trade and Economic Diversification (STED) framework, utilising the workshop-based approach with 24 key stakeholders of the sector. Content analysis was used with the help of Nvivo software.

The findings revealed that there are skills shortages, skills gaps, skills mismatches and skills diversification programmes available through higher education and work-based learning. Further, there are labour supply challenges such as national skills policy and strategy, government and stakeholder coordination, funding, relevance of curriculum and qualifications, access to practicals and the absence of a clear national vision for the sector.

This study possesses an inherent limitation in terms of generalising the findings derived from qualitative research.

This research is among the first of its kind to assess skills needs and gaps through the lens of STED framework, which has been overlooked in previous literature. Importantly, this study provides vocational insights into skill needs in the sector.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue on “Employability of higher education graduates in europe” from the perspective of global changes.

The empirically based papers of the special issue address six main areas related to the transition of graduates from education to the labour market: employment and employability, job (mis)match, development of particular areas of competency, new certificates of higher education, along with the disciplinarity and status of the self-perceived role of academics in supporting graduates’ careers.

This issue provides empirical findings relevant to various stakeholders of higher education systems which are essential for strategic development in the area.

The selection of papers proposes an interdisciplinary scientific approach in the areas of bridging (higher) education with the labour market.