Education-Occupation Linkage in the Highly-Educated Workforce: Patterns and Sources of Difference by Race/Ethnicity

Yao Lu, Xiaoguang Li and Benjamin Elbers
Additional contact information
Yao Lu: Columbia University, USA
Xiaoguang Li: Xi’an Jiaotong University, China
Benjamin Elbers: University of Oxford, UK

Work, Employment & Society, 2024, vol. 38, issue 2, 461-482

Abstract: The present study investigates education-to-occupation linkage by race/ethnicity in the increasingly diverse educated workforce of the United States. We use a recently introduced linkage approach and identify two dimensions of linkage between educational credentials and occupation (vertical and horizontal linkage). Using data from the 2014 –2018 American Community Survey, we find notable differences in the total strength of education-occupation linkage by race/ethnicity. Highly-educated Black workers experience weaker vertical and horizontal linkage than their white counterparts; this is also true for Hispanic workers, though to a lesser extent. Ethnoracial differences in vertical linkage are stronger and more consistent than those in horizontal linkage. We decompose group differences in linkage strength and find that differences in occupational distributions and the composition-invariant structural component account for a large part of the overall difference in linkage strength. Separate analyses by degree levels show that, while the linkage is generally stronger for advanced degree holders than bachelor’s degree holders, ethnoracial differences remain similar between the two groups of highly-educated workers.

Keywords: education; linkage; mismatch; occupation; race and ethnicity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09500170221133714 (text/html)

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:sae:woemps:v:38:y:2024:i:2:p:461-482

DOI: 10.1177/09500170221133714

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Work, Employment & Society from British Sociological Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().