Education, aspiration, action: solving the job skills mismatch

Young people around the world are more educated than ever before, but that’s a potential problem. If markets are flooded with qualified or overqualified job applicants, and if most young people apply for only a narrow subset of jobs, then recent graduates will not find employment, or they will be underemployed – ie, relegated involuntarily to part-time work. In fact, before the COVID-19 pandemic caused skyrocketing unemployment in the United States this year, involuntary part-time workers made up about 1.0% of all those employed in the US, while the OECD average is about three times higher at 3.1%. In the EU, the underemployment rate – again, pre-pandemic – was even higher, at about 4.6%; however, there are significant differences by country. For example, pre COVID-19 underemployment stood at just 1.7% in Croatia and 4.6% in Montenegro, but 8.3% in Spain and 11.9% in Italy.