We study two first‐order economic consequences of vertical mismatch, using a simple (neoclassical) model of under and overemployment. Individuals of high type can perform both skilled and unskilled jobs, but only a fraction of low‐type workers can perform skilled jobs. People have different...

In this paper, we develop a small open economy model of secular stagnation that allows for both unemployment and underemployment. While unemployment results from the standard search and matching friction, underemployment in the form of an involuntary shortfall of working hours occurs under...

The UK has one of the highest proportions of tertiary educated workers in Europe but also one of the highest rates of graduate underemployment. Little is known however about the extent to which there is a scarring effect of early graduate underemployment on future labour market outcomes. In this...

In this paper, we analyze the long-term effects of initial labor market conditions on young Mexicans. We construct a synthetic panel from the National Survey of Occupation and Employment. The sample is grouped according to region, educational level, year of interview, and year of entry into the...

While the ill luck of graduating during a recession is understood to potentially result in job mismatch, less is known about the drivers of underemployment outside of business cycles. This paper shows that the college subsidy investments undertaken as part of the WWII, Vietnam War, and Post-9/11...

This paper examines vertical skills mismatch in Türkiye using a refined measure that adjusts for occupation, age group, sector, and year to isolate genuine education-job misalignment from compositional artifacts. Drawing on nationally representative labor force survey microdata from 2009 to...

We evaluate the effectiveness of Belgium's short-time work (STW) program during the Great Recession, a period when the country recorded the highest STW take-up rate in Europe. STW allows firms to reduce working hours in response to temporary shocks while avoiding layoffs, playing a key role in...

This article proposes a measure of educational mismatch based on a novel definition of schooling that takes into account the different levels of skills acquired by individuals with the same education. It is assumed that less (more) able individuals could compensate for their skill deficit...

Little attention has been paid to supply- and demand-side factors explaining regional variation in youth overeducation. These factors might be drivers of a crowding out effect, where workers at a given level of education are expelled from their "matched" labour market positions by workers with a...

During the Covid-19 crisis, most OECD countries used short-time work (subsidized reductions in working hours) to preserve employment. This paper documents that short-time work affects the behavior of firms (supply) and households (demand). First, using household survey data from Germany, we show...

This seventh edition of the European Employment Services (EURES) report on labour market imbalances explores the current status of labour shortages and surpluses and how they have developed over time. Since the first report, published in 2016, the methodology for identifying labour shortages and...

This seventh edition of the European Employment Services (EURES) report on labour market imbalances explores the current status of labour shortages and surpluses and how they have developed over time. Since the first report, published in 2016, the methodology for identifying labour shortages and...

Short-time work (STW) has been widely used, both during the Great Recession and the COVID crisis, to preserve jobs. In most European countries, the implementation of STW schemes is often the result of bargaining between trade unions and employers, yet very little is known about the role of...

We investigate how firms adjust to demand shocks when wages and employment determination are regulated. Using firm-level data for the Italian metal engineering industry from 2009 to 2021, we estimate the elasticity of the wage bill to changes in firm's real sales. We disentangle the effect on...

Since the 1990s, the Czech Republic has witnessed a significant increase in educational attainment, leading to a rise in educational mismatch. This study investigates the prevalence of vertical and horizontal educational mismatch using data from surveys conducted in 2011 and 2022 on Czech prime...

How does being over- or underqualified at the beginning of a worker's career affect skill acquisition, retention, and promotion? Despite the importance of mismatch for the labor market, self-selection into jobs has made estimating these effects difficult. We overcome endogeneity concerns in the...

We estimate the effects of being over- or underqualified for a job using quasi-random assignment of new enlistees to over 130 different jobs in the US Air Force. Being overqualified causes higher attrition, both during technical training and afterward when individuals are working in their...

The UK has one of the highest proportions of tertiary educated workers in Europe but also one of the highest rates of graduate underemployment. Little is known however about the extent to which there is a scarring effect of early graduate underemployment on future labour market outcomes. In this...

Ob in den Tarifverhandlungen oder der Debatte über den Fachkräftemangel: Die Arbeitszeiten der Beschäftigten in Deutschland werden derzeit kontrovers diskutiert. Unterschiedliche Seiten bringen eine Ausweitung oder auch eine Reduzierung der Arbeitszeit ins Spiel. Auf Grundlage von Daten des...

The sixth edition of the EURES report on labour market imbalances explores the current status of labour shortages and surpluses and how they have evolved over time. Since the first report, published in 2016, much of the methodology for identifying labour shortages and surpluses has remained...

This article provides an overview of the economic literature on short-time work. It presents the main characteristics of short-time work since its emergence in Germany in the 1930s. It analyzes its effectiveness as a job preservation mechanism, drawing on theoretical models and empirical...

Skill mismatch is a key indicator of labour market research that has received significant attention. To date, various approaches of test-based measurement of skill mismatch have been used in research, generating differing results. However, it remains unclear which method is the most valid for...

This study analyzes the mechanisms by which short-time work (STW) schemes affect firm's employment adjustments, using establishment-level data during the Great Recession from Japan. The findings show that STW leads to a decrease in both hiring and separations, with no significant positive effect...

The aim of this study is to assess the effect of informal employment on the occurrence of overeducation in developing countries, focusing on the specific case of the DRC. Using employment data, we determine the incidence of overeducation and we isolate the role of informal employment as a...