Overeducation and Mismatching in Italy
Mismatching and overeducation phenomena play an important role not only at international level but also on the Italian labour market.
According to ISTAT [58], the incidence of overeducation among graduates has increased over the second half of the 1990s.
In 2004, overeducated people amounted to 15% reaching 22% in 2013. Moreover, overskilling is much more common than overeducation: 21% for the first job and 11% five years after graduation [9]. Italy is still behind Spain and the UK.In Italy, the production system is oriented towards traditional manufacturing sectors, and therefore, the demand for human capital is expected to remain low and stable. That is why these phenomena are important [33]. A large amount of literature refers to the inefficiency of the education system in generating a sufficient level of skills for labour market demand (for details, see [33]). Ordine and Rose [67], for example, show that inefficient education choices, due to the different quality of education supplied by universities, can generate overeducation.
Overeducation has been analysed for young graduates and PhD students (see, for example, [4, 17, 33, 34, 42, 52, 67, 68]). Chevalier [38], Mavromaras et al. [63], Pecoraro [70] and Gaeta et al. [53] measure the wage effect of genuine versus apparent overeducation by looking at the relationship between overeducation and job satisfaction (see [60]).
The origin of educational mismatch can be found in the low demand for more educated workers compared to the skills supplied by the education system [31]. From the supply point of view, Checchi [37], Pastore [69] and Franzini and Raitano [50], among others, note the low level and quality of educational attainment of young people in Italy; the lowest compared to the EU average.
In their sampling study, McGuinness and Sloane [9] found that the extent of educational mismatch in Italy is one of the highest among the EU countries included in their sample.
In 2010, Italy was the third from last performer, with a 23% share of overeducated workers at the time of their first job and 13% five years after graduation [43, 80]. According to this result, Italy stands after Spain and the UK that have a 17 and 14% share of overeducation, respectively, five years after graduation. In other EU countries included in the sample, overeducation is almost always below the 10% threshold. Mismatching increases year by year.Franzini and Raitano [50] found that overeducation is less frequent in the Southern regions than in the Northern ones even though demand for skills in the South is supposedly lower, due to a lower level of development. Moreover, in the Southern regions, a larger number of workers are employed in the public sector, where overeducation is less frequent.
Croce [42] found that frictions and barriers that increase the costs of spatial mobility worsen the matching between required and acquired education on the labour market. Furthermore, among graduates, movers are less overeducated than stayers and a longer migration distance decreases overeducation risks. It should be noted that this issue is also discussed in the Cedefop paper [36], by comparing data from EU countries.