Postgraduate education and job mismatch in Italy: Does migration help?

Abstract

Doctoral graduates represent the pinnacle of education. While the importance of increasing their number has been recognised by the Italian government and there has been a huge increase in the number of publicly funded PhD scholarships, doctoral graduates still struggle in the labour market to find employment commensurate with their skills and competencies. It is against this backdrop that the role of migration becomes crucial. Exploiting Italian microdata at the census level, this study aims to investigate how human capital migration, occurring at different ‘times’ of individual's life and across different regions, could mitigate the potential education–job mismatch, which is measured here from a multidimensional perspective by looking at overeducation, overskilling and satisfaction. Our findings reveal some positive effects of migration on reducing this mismatch. Moreover, the study highlights two relevant gaps, the first between domestic and foreign workers and the second between genders.