Employment polarization and over-education in Germany, Spain, Sweden and UK

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.