Occupational hazard: Inequalities in labour market mismatch

Lindsey Macmillan (), Richard Murphy () and Gill Wyness ()
Additional contact information
Lindsey Macmillan: UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities
Richard Murphy: Department of Economics, University of Texas at Austin
Gill Wyness: UCL Centre for Education Policy & Equalising Opportunities

No 24-06, CEPEO Working Paper Series from UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities

Abstract: In this paper we depart from traditional skills-based measures of occupational mismatch. Whereas skill-based measures are typically non-hierarchical, and involve comparing an individual's skills to those required by their occupation, we devise a new hierarchical method. Specifically, we create two continuous, measures of occupational quality: an `input' measure derived from the initial qualifications of others in an occupation, and an `output' measure derived from the realized wages of others, alongside a corresponding measure of individual ability. We use these detailed, comparable measures to examine the extent to which individuals mismatch into occupations, for the first time in the literature. We explore the nature of mismatch throughout the ability distribution, focusing on systematic differences by socio-economic status (SES) and gender. We find low SES individuals are employed in lower wage and lower qualification occupations compared to their similarly qualified peers. Meanwhile, while females match to occupation groups with higher achieving employees than males, they are employed in lower wage occupations. Educational routes between compulsory education and occupations at age 25 can explain around 33% of these SES gaps among high achievers, but persistent sizeable difference remain, conditional on all post-16 activity. By contrast the gender gap in mismatch remains stable, suggesting that education choices are not driving the differences. Instead, industry worked in accounts for most of the gender gap, though only among low achievers.

Keywords: mismatch; inequalities; occupational choices; education; gender (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I20 I24 J16 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2024-10, Revised 2024-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gen and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://repec-cepeo.ucl.ac.uk/cepeow/cepeowp24-06.pdf First version, 2024 (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:ucl:cepeow:24-06

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPEO Working Paper Series from UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jake Anders ().