Labor migration and overeducation among young college graduates

Abstract

This paper focuses on labor market outcomes of young college graduates in the US, analyzing the nexus between migration, overeducation, and economic conditions. A series of overeducation probit models are estimated, using data from the March Supplements of the Current Population Survey, 2000-2014. We find that labor migrants are less prone to being overeducated as unemployment rates increase. For stayers, in contrast, we find a positive link between overeducation propensities and unemployment rates. As a result of this response divergence, overeducation probabilities of stayers exceed those of movers during times of medium to high unemployment rates. The results are robust to various definitions of overeducation and various sample restrictions.

Entry into working life: Internal migration and the job match quality of higher‐educated graduates

“…The number of nonmovers appears large because we do not include intra‐municipal moves. Due to the set‐up of our data, we cannot observe hem, but moreover these arguably concern moves with a residential rather than a work‐related motive, which is found to be an important distinction (Waldorf & Yun, ). We also include squared terms in our analysis .…”

“…Regional and individual productivity is maximized if graduates are able to fully exploit their talents by achieving a good match on the labor market. At the individual level, spatial mobility is sometimes necessary to escape from a lack of suitable job opportunities, as an inferior match early in the career may have negative longer‐term consequences (Brunner & Kuhn, ; Waldorf & Yun, ). Recent graduates have been found to be particularly spatially mobile, since, following graduation, they seek to achieve a good match on the labor market to obtain a high return on their educational investment (Hensen, De Vries, & Cörvers, ; Iammarino & Marinelli, ; Venhorst, Van Dijk, & Van Wissen, ).…”

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

“…These dimensions have been extensively investigated in relation to Italian or U.K. university undergraduates, and several studies have reported that migration favours a good education–job match (Abreu et al, 2015; Croce & Ghignoni, 2015; Devillanova, 2013; Di Cintio & Grassi, 2013), especially when it involves a move from Southern to Northern regions (Iammarino & Marinelli, 2015). Similarly, looking at U.S. college graduates, it has been shown that migration reduces labour overeducation, especially in time of crisis (Waldorf & Do Yun, 2016), and it is more likely to occur toward geographical areas that offer employment opportunities that fit and reward graduate's competencies (Winters, 2017). Further, data on young people from Britain and Australia indicated that human capital migration, especially long‐distance migration, increases job satisfaction (Perales, 2017).…”

Deriving a Typology of University Graduates’ Career Pathways Using Theoretically Driven Sequence Analysis

“…Chapter 2: Conceptualising Routes and Outcomes 42 often promoted by events such as divorce, widowhood and retirement Green 2010, Waldorf andDo Yun 2016), and leads to increased risk of economic instability and lifestyle changes in the year following the move (Geist and McManus 2008). This wide range of non-economic drivers behind migration decisions can obscure the complexity of migration processes, which provides additional rationale behind the need for more understanding of graduate migration beyond the assumption of the ERT.…”

“…As shown in previous section of this chapter, this group of movers are most likely to have moved more than once and their geographical mobility is inconsistent with the assumptions of the ERT theory. Under the assumptions of ERT, this might imply that complex movers are least likely to prioritise their social mobility, and might have been driven by other than economic reasons, such as divorce or widowhood Green 2010, Waldorf andDo Yun 2016).…”