One Third of Italian Scientific Graduates Have Jobs That Don't Match Their Skills

THE RESULTS OF BOCCONI'S RESEARCH IN COLLABORATION WITH J.P. MORGAN HIGHLIGHT A DIFFICULT SCHOOL TO WORK TRANSITION AND A MISMATCH BETWEEN EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS AND SKILLS, WHICH PENALIZES THE YOUNG IN THEIR SEARCH FOR A JOB. 30% OF SCIENCE GRADUATES WORK FAR BELOW THEIR POTENTIAL

The Italian labor market records striking inequalities in terms of age, gender, geographical area and education. In 2015 the most advantaged profile (male, 40-44 years, living in the North, graduate) had 50.3% higher chances to be employed than the most disadvantaged profile (female, 20-24 years, living in the South, with middle school license at most). The most penalizing feature (the one that explains 56% of the gap) is, however, age, according to the results of the first year of Employment, Skills and Productivity in Italy, a three-year research project conducted by Bocconi University as a part of the wider J.P. Morgan Chase’s New Skills at Work project.
 
The 15-24 years old are 6.5% of the labor force, but 20.3% of the long-term unemployed, while the gap between youth and adult unemployment, between 2007 and 2015, rose from 14% to 31%.
 
The data suggest the need for policies aimed at young people. In Italy the school-to-work transition is particularly critical for two reasons: the mismatch between skills required by the labor market and skills learned in the classroom and the fact that the qualifications awarded by the school system are bad indicators of actual skills.
 
While the percentage of Italians whose qualification and position don’t match is very high, the picture changes when analyzing skills instead of qualifications. 76% of the over-qualified and 79% of the under-qualified hold positions well-matched to their actual skills. The share of over-skilled (14%) and under-skilled (9%) is thus in line with the rest of the world.
 
Over-skilling is, however, higher among graduates (19.6%) and dramatically high (30%) among graduates in science, technology, engineering and math, because the Italian industrial system, concentrated in traditional sectors and with a prevalence of small businesses, seems to offer particularly poor jobs, which do not allow the use and maintenance of skills.
 
"The prevalence of overskilling among science graduates may, however, be interpreted as a reserve potential that Italy can exploit if the industrial system should evolve towards a higher level of innovation and better jobs."
 
Underskilling is, instead, widespread especially among skilled blue-collar workers (23%). Employers complain, moreover, that 11% of positions are hard-to-fill, but they seem to do little to make them more attractive (wage trends for these positions are no different from the rest, perhaps because of collective bargaining rigidities).
 
During the crisis, between 2007 and 2015, labor market inequality has grown: the gap in the chance to work between the most and the least advantaged profiles has doubled (in 2007 it was around 25%, in 2015 it’s 50%), with the exception of gender inequality: the gap between men’s and women’s outlooks, though still existing, has narrowed. The crisis seems to have affected mainly "male" industries such as building and construction.
 
The research team consists of Fabiano Schivardi, Jérôme Adda and Antonella Trigari, IGIER Bocconi, Paola Monti, Rodolfo Debenedetti Foundation, and Michele Pellizzari, University of Geneva.

by Fabio Todesco