Job matching in the UK and Europe

This study has examined the job matching issue from two perspectives.The first is the viewpoint of employees, derived from the European Working Conditions Survey, conducted in 1996 and 2000. Using a self-report measure of job matching, we have been able, using univariate statistics and multinomial analysis, to examine the following questions: What is the extent of job-skills mismatches amongst those in work in the UK labour market? How has this varied across EU countries and across time? What types of workers are most likely to be mismatched to their jobs? Are job-skills mismatches associated with lower levels of training? Are firms training the ‘wrong’ workers (i.e. those who do not need the training in order to fill the job requirements, rather than those who lack the skills required to do their jobs)? Second, and drawing on our empirical findings, we have conducted qualitative research in four organisations in the UK which employ some of the workers we have identified as most likely to experience job-skills mismatches to explore in finer detail why, and how, this occurs.

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