Overeducation in the Australian Labour Market: Its Incidence and Effects

Ingrid Linsley

No 939, Department of Economics - Working Papers Series from The University of Melbourne

Abstract: Overeducation is a form of labour underutilisation which occurs when the formal education level of a worker exceeds that which is required for the job. It is a form of underemployment that imposes significant costs on individuals and economies. Using data from the Negotiating the Life Course survey this study determines the incidence and effects of overeducation in the Australian labour market. This study found that 27.1 per cent of individuals are overeducated, and the incidence is higher among those who are young, have preschool-aged children, work in large firms and have fewer years of tenure. A positive relationship was also found between timerelated and skill-related underemployment. Overeducation is found to impose costs on individuals, reducing earnings by between 10 and 20 per cent and lowering job satisfaction.

Keywords: Overeducation; labour market; education; earnings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J23 J24 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2005
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.economics.unimelb.edu.au/downloads/wpapers-05/939.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found (http://www.economics.unimelb.edu.au/downloads/wpapers-05/939.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> http://fbe.unimelb.edu.au/economics/downloads/wpapers-05/939.pdf [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://fbe.unimelb.edu.au/economics/downloads/wpapers-05/939.pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mlb:wpaper:939

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Department of Economics - Working Papers Series from The University of Melbourne Department of Economics, The University of Melbourne, 4th Floor, FBE Building, Level 4, 111 Barry Street. Victoria, 3010, Australia. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dandapani Lokanathan ().