Over-education and labour market: a snapshot

The paper proposes a brief analysis of the literature to highlight what were the changes that led to the transformation of the occupational structure; there are two main macrotrends: increased use of technology and its impact on the employment structure; educational expansion and therefore an increase and diversification of educational qualifications. The contradictions of so-called post-Fordism are underlined, which on the one hand requires “super-worker 4.0”, flexible, educated and adaptable to change, on the other hand creates the conditions for a widespread under-employment. In particular, from literature, the over-education phenomenon was analyzed connected both to educational system that fails to adapt to socio-economic changes and to production system that is not innovative and internationally competitive. In Italy, although the number of graduates in Italy is growing, it is still below the European average. Despite such a low offer of graduates, there is also a high percentage of over-educated in Italy, indicator both of the lack of connection between the educational and production system and of the fact that the Italian one is a labour market strongly oriented to internal production and high intensity of unskilled and low-skilled labour.