Rethinking Under-Skilling in Europe☆

Ilias Livanos and Imanol Núñez

A chapter in Skill Mismatch in Labor Markets, 2017, vol. 45, pp 279-304 from Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Abstract: This paper investigates the prevalence and distribution of under-skilling across Europe. First, in order to understand why under-skilling occurs, three main theoretical approaches are discussed: (a) Inefficient signaling, (b) Skill shortages, and (c) On-the-job training substitution. Second, in order to measure the real dimension of the problem, we use the Cedefop European Skills and Jobs Survey (ESJS)1to assess whether workers’ skills were lower than required at the point they started their job. Our results are rather mixed. First, we find under-skilling being related to some academic fields such as Health & Medicine, and Engineering. Second, we find that under-skilling is more prevalent among, not surprisingly, young workers but, rather unexpectedly, among permanent workers working in high-skilled occupations.

Keywords: Under-skilling; over-skilling; skill shortages; skill mismatch; J2; J21; J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... 7-912120170000045008
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/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:eme:rleczz:s0147-912120170000045008

DOI: 10.1108/S0147-912120170000045008

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Research in Labor Economics from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().