Education-job mismatch in Brazil: incidence of over-education of labor or scarcity of qualified jobs

Authors

Keywords:

Labor market. Over-education. RAIS. Random effect.

Abstract

The Brazilian labor market has significantly changed in recent decades, including an increase in workers with higher education. However, it shows an imbalance caused by overeducation, leading to inefficiency, decreased productivity, low wages, and dissatisfaction with mismatched jobs. This study aims to explain whether overeducation in Brazil is driven by labor supply or job demand factors. Using a microdata panel from the Annual List of Social Information (RAIS) for the period from 2010 to 2019, micro and macroeconomic variables were analyzed, and a random effects model with Newey-West robust standard errors was estimated, aggregated for the 27 Federative Units. Results indicate that overeducation stems from both the increase in workers with higher education and the slow growth in demand for qualified jobs. It is concluded that Brazil should adopt policies to improve worker qualifications and enhance the quality of education, creating economic conditions for the growth in demand for qualified jobs to be directly correlated with the supply of qualified workers, thus better allocating workers in the labor market.

Published

2024-05-27