Ana Santiago-Vela

1. Mismatch in the labour market occurs when the education or skill supply of a worker does not align with the corresponding job’s education or skill requirements (McGuinness, Pouliakas, and Redmon...

A pervasive discourse calls for worker upskilling amid ongoing digital transformation. This study introduces a skills‐to‐job mismatch perspective into research on the digital transformation of work by conceptualising technological adoption as a process that reshapes the relationship between workers’ skill endowments and evolving job requirements. To empirically address this perspective, the study combines German individual‐ and establishment‐level data with an entropy balancing method. The findings reveal that adopting new digital technologies in the workplace is associated with greater underskilling and reduced overskilling (i.e., skill underutilisation). Furthermore, effect heterogeneity emerges across the level of digitalisation in economic sectors. Technology adoption is more strongly associated with lower overskilling in less digitally mature sectors, while the positive association with underskilling is evenly distributed across sectors. Overall, this study provides a theoretically grounded framework and an informed empirical basis for a more nuanced debate on the digital transformation of work.

This study supplements the existing conceptualisation of skills mismatch based on cognitive evaluations (being underskilled or overskilled) with an affective aspect that captures how workers cope with skills (mis)match situations (feeling overchallenged or underchallenged) and an analysis of skills mismatch situations’ influence on job satisfaction of workers with higher education (HE) and vocational education and training (VET). Using the German BIBB/BAuA Employment Survey 2018, the results indicated that underskilling by itself was not negatively associated with job satisfaction; however, underskilling in combination with feeling overchallenged exerted a significant negative influence on job satisfaction. This corroborates the approach of differentiating challenging (i.e. non-detrimental) jobs from overchallenging jobs. Overskilling was associated with penalties regarding job satisfaction, whereas overskilling in combination with underchallenging jobs produced a remarkably larger negative impact on job satisfaction. Moreover, overskilled HE workers received larger penalties regarding job satisfaction than those received by overskilled VET workers.

Overeducation is indicative of a suboptimal education–job match and is related to several negative consequences for workers. Despite extensive research explaining the overeducation phenomenon, previous studies have not simultaneously analyzed educational background (i.e., educational degrees) and social background effects, or have failed to consider both the vertical and horizontal dimension that educational degrees entail (i.e., level and field). This article seeks to overcome these limitations by examining whether overeducation varies (1) across educational background (considering both level and field of educational degrees), (2) across social background, and (3) by social background among workers with the same degree. Based on the German BIBB/BAuA Employment Survey 2018, results suggest that highly educated workers are more likely to be overeducated for the jobs they hold, implying the supply of this workforce exceeds the available adequate jobs on the German labor market. The field of education determines the risk of overeducation as well, with some occupationally specific fields of education (IT, natural sciences, and health) making for lower overeducation risk for both vocational and academic education. The results also indicate social background directly influences education–job matches (controlling for level and field of education), i.e., a social gap in overeducation. This evidence suggests an effect of social background on job allocation processes, beyond the effect of education, so that the offspring of privileged classes (i.e., high salariat) use the same degrees on the labor market more profitably than the offspring of less privileged classes. Given the low attention paid to education–job matches in social stratification analyses, the present article makes a noteworthy contribution to the literature on social stratification and inequality. In addition, the present research will serve as a base for future studies on overeducation including both the vertical and horizontal dimension of educational degrees.