Education and skill mismatches: wage and job satisfaction consequences

Purpose – This paper aims to highlight the relevance of examining education and skill job‐worker mismatches as two different, although simultaneous, phenomena of the labor market. Most previous literature does not take into account skill mismatch, and a number of papers deal with both kinds of mismatches as equivalent. Design/methodology/approach – Spanish data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) survey for the year 2001 are used to examine the degree of statistical association between both education and skill mismatches, and to estimate wage equations as well as job satisfaction equations, considering satisfaction with pay, with the type of job and overall job satisfaction, in order to analyze the consequences of both types of mismatches from the workers’ viewpoint. Findings – The statistical analysis shows that education and skill mismatches are weakly related in the Spanish labor market. The econometric analysis reveals that skill mismatches appear as key determinants of workers’ job satisfaction, while education mismatches have much weaker impacts, if any, on workers’ job satisfaction; however, both skill and education mismatches have negative impacts on wages. Practical implications – The analysis points out that the research strategy that considers education mismatch as a proxy for the study of the effects of skill mismatch is rather weak because skill and education mismatches appear to capture different aspects of the accuracy of the job‐worker pairing, and, therefore, they have separate consequences for workers, both in monetary and non‐monetary terms. Skill mismatches are perceived by workers as a much more relevant problem than education mismatches. The wage and job satisfaction consequences of skill mismatches are strongly negative; to the contrary, education mismatches show much weaker effects. Originality/value – The paper emphasizes that neglecting the effects of skill mismatch along with those of education mismatch in the analysis of the monetary and non‐monetary consequences of inadequate job‐worker pairing can lead to erroneous interpretations of the facts.