[Vid-stund] Málstofa á vegum Hagfræðideildar: Underemployment and Migration

[Bjargey Anna Guðbrandsdóttir]

Málstofa á vegum Hagfræðideildar
Underemployment and Migration
Oddi, 3.hæð, föstudaginn 2. des. kl. 14-15

Dr. Wright will present a paper which examines empirically the interaction 
between over-education, under-employment and migration behavior of 
graduates of UK Higher Education Institutions. The main focus is the 
nature of national and international graduate migration flows. 

The analysis is carried out with a micro-level data for six cohorts of 
graduates constructed by matching information from two large scale surveys 
carried out by the Higher Education Statistical Agency: (1) Students in 
Higher Education Institutions and (2) Destinations of Leavers from Higher 
Education. Migration equations are estimated where the probability of 
graduates is related to a set of observable characteristics. The analysis 
suggests that migration is a selective process with graduates with certain 
characteristics having considerably higher probabilities of migrating both 
to other regions of the UK and abroad. More specifically, those students 
who ?do well? have a considerably higher probability of migrating from the 
regions where they studied.

With this data it is also possible to calculate the rates of employment in 
so-called ?non-graduate? jobs. Non-graduate jobs are those that do not 
require the skills obtained through higher education. An extreme example 
of this type of under-employment would be individual with a medical 
driving a taxi. Around one-third of undergraduate graduates, who are 
employed six months after graduation, are working in non-graduate jobs. 
However, the rate of employment in non-graduate jobs declines with age and 
experience.  3½ years after graduation, around 20% of undergraduate 
graduates are still employed in non-graduate jobs. These estimates suggest 
that under-employment is a serious problem in the UK. 

A descriptive analysis indicates that there is negative statistical 
association between being employed in a non-graduate job and having 
migrated. Employment equations, that control for a variety of factors 
thought to influence employment decisions, confirms the direction of this 
association. In this empirical analysis, particular attention is paid to 
the potential endogenous nature of migration decisions in employment 
decisions through IV-estimation and by matching methods applied to quasi 
experimental design generated by geography.


Robert E. Wright, PhD, is a Professor of Economics in the Strathclyde 
Business School at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland.
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