Do Chinese Employers Avoid Hiring Overqualified Workers? Evidence from an Internet Job Board

Kailing Shen () and Peter Kuhn ()

A chapter in Labor Market Issues in China, 2013, vol. 37, pp 1-30 from Emerald Publishing Ltd

Abstract: Can having more education than a job requires reduce one’s chances of being offered the job? We study this question in a sample of applications to jobs that are posted on an urban Chinese website. We find that being overqualified in this way does not reduce the success rates of university-educated jobseekers applying to college-level jobs, but that it does hurt college-educated workers’ chances when applying to jobs requiring technical school, which involves three fewer years of education than college. Our results highlight a difficult situation faced by the recent large cohort of college-educated Chinese workers: They seem to fare poorly in the competition for jobs, both when pitted against more-educated university graduates and less-educated technical school graduates.

Keywords: Overqualification; Internet job board; job search and match; labor demand; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Working Paper: Do Chinese Employers Avoid Hiring Overqualified Workers? Evidence from an Internet Job Board (2012)
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