Overqualification of Russian Employees: Scale, Determinants, Consequences

Employers, government officials, and politicians actively discuss the problems of overeducated employees, massive work not in the specialty, the so-called skills mismatch, skill shortage and obsolescence.All of these are, in fact, manifestations of a gap (mismatch) between the characteristics of employees (their level of education, specialty, qualifications) and the requirements of the labor market.This problem is vast and diverse.In the scientific literature three types of mismatch are distinguished: 1) education mismatch -(non)compliance of the employee's education level to the requirements of a certain workplace; 2) work not in the specialty (horizontal / field of study mismatch); 3) qualification (skill) mismatch -(non)compliance of the employee's qualifications and skills to the work performed.In the publications of the 1980s and 1990s, the mismatch in the labor market was analyzed mainly at the macrolevel as a gap between the aggregate demand and supply of labor, as