Who Is Ahead in the Labor Queue? Institutions’ and Employers’ Perspective on Overeducation, Undereducation, and Horizontal Mismatches

Abstract

Using vignettes, this study compares employers’ assessments of matched and mismatched job applicants in England and the Netherlands. It contributes to the overeducation literature in several ways. First, matching is measured from the perspective of employers, who are better informed about job requirements than employees. Second, overeducated applicants are compared to matched applicants competing for the same job opening. This shift in focus toward applicant pools is necessary to properly test whether overeducation is rewarded during the hiring process, the central tenet of job competition theory. Third, vertical and horizontal mismatches are analyzed jointly: This more fine-grained differentiation refines sociological perspectives on credentialism and reveals the complex ways in which employers assign applicants to jobs. Results show that Dutch employers apply more rigid hiring floors and more strongly penalize horizontal mismatches: Compared to England, in the Netherlands, overeducation cannot compensate for the lack of occupation-specific training.