Employment polarization and over-education in Germany, Spain, Sweden and UK
in: Martin Kahanec, Mikuláš Luptácik, Philipp Schmidt-Dengler, Economic Policy in a Dynamic Environment. Selected Papers of the 2016 Joint Annual Meeting of the Slovak Economic Association
and the Austrian Economic Association
The objective of this study is twofold. First, it investigates the association between technological change and over-education
by analysing incidence of over-education and its change across skill-based and task-based job categories. Second, it compares
countries with different employment change pattern – mainly upgrading and polarising – to establish a link between employment
polarisation and over-education. Using data from European Labour Force Survey covering the period from 1999 to 2007, the paper
analyses four countries of Europe – Germany, Spain, Sweden and the UK. The results suggest higher incidence of over-education
in polarised countries – Spain and UK – as compared to countries with a somewhat upgrading pattern of employment change –
Germany and Sweden. It also reveals that in Spain and UK, over-education is prominent and increasing over time in the low-skill
jobs which are mostly non-routine manual in nature, while Germany and Sweden have more over-educated workers in middle skilled
routine and high skilled analytical jobs. I find similar results in both descriptive and job fixed effects regressions.
