Occupational choice of young graduates: Do job tasks matter?

Stijn Rocher

Working Papers from University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics

Abstract: This paper examines the extent to which graduates of higher education direct their own occupational choices. I begin by developing an empirical indicator to identify the relation between occupations based on their task content. To this end, I combine individual education and employment data of UK graduates with ratings on 42 task content areas from the UK Skill Survey. Based on these data, I show that UK graduates who majored in similar fields choose occupations with similar task packages. This is followed by a discussion of the wage implications of entering an atypical occupation relative to the modal graduate from the same field. As such, the indicator can be interpreted within a mismatch context. I find that task mismatch increases the probability of over-qualification, which is subsequently associated with lower wages.

Keywords: Occupational choice; Task content; Mismatch (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I21 J24 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2010-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu and nep-lab
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ant:wpaper:2010027

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