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This paper uses HESA data from the Destination of Leavers from Higher Education survey 2003/04 to examine whether more mobile students in terms of choice of institution and location of employment earn more than those who are less mobile. The clear finding is that mobility is associated with superior earnings outcomes, but principally through mobility as it relates to students extending their horizon of job search. A bivariate probit analysis also confirms that there is a positive relationship between regional mobility both in the choice of attending university and the choice of where to take up employment.

There is an apparent inconsistency in the existing literature on graduate employment in the UK. While analyses of rates of return to graduates or graduate mark-ups show high returns, suggesting that demand has kept up with a rapidly rising supply of graduates, the literature on over-education suggests that many graduates are unable to find employment in graduate jobs and the proportion over-educated has risen over time. Using a simple supply and demand model applied to UK data that defines graduate jobs in terms of the proportion of graduates and/or the graduate earnings mark-up within occupations, we find that there has been a shift in the likelihood of young British university graduates being employed in non-graduate jobs in the recent years of our analysis. This finding is in contrast to existing studies.

The interpretation of graduate mismatch manifested either as overeducation or as overskilling remains problematical. This paper uses annual panel information on both educational and skills mismatches uniquely found in the HILDA survey to analyse the relationship of both mismatches with pay, job satisfaction and job mobility. We find that overeducation and overskilling are distinct phenomena with different labour market outcomes and that their combination results in the most severe negative labour market outcomes. Using panel methodology reduces strongly the size of many relevant coefficients, questioning previous cross-section results and suggesting the presence of considerable unobserved heterogeneity which varies by gender.

The interpretation of graduate mismatch manifested either as overeducation or as overskilling remains problematical. This paper uses annual panel information on both educational and skills mismatches uniquely found in the HILDA survey to analyse the relationship of both mismatches with pay, job satisfaction and job mobility. We find that overeducation and overskilling are distinct phenomena with different labour market outcomes and that their combination results in the most severe negative labour market outcomes. Using panel methodology reduces strongly the size of many relevant coefficients, questioning previous cross-section results and suggesting the presence of considerable unobserved heterogeneity which varies by gender.

Interpretation of the phenomenon of graduate overeducation remains problematical. In an attempt to resolve at least some of the issues this paper makes use of the panel element of the HILDA survey, distinguishing between four possible combinations of education/skills mismatch. For men we find a significant pay penalty only for those who are both overskilled and overeducated, while for women there is a smaller but significant pay penalty in all cases of mismatch. Overeducation does not have any negative effect on the job satisfaction of either men or women, while overskilling either on its own or jointly with overeducation does so. Finally, overeducation has no significant effect on the job mobility of either men or women, though there is a significant positive effect on both voluntary and involuntary job loss in men who are both overskilled and overeducated, with the results again differing for women. At least for a substantial number of workers it appears, therefore, that overeducation represents a matter of choice (or is possibly a consequence of low ability for that level of education), while overskilling imposes real costs on the individuals concerned.

There is an apparent inconsistency in the existing literature on graduate employment in the UK. While analyses of rates of return to graduates or graduate markups show high returns, suggesting that demand has kept up with a rapidly rising supply of graduates, the literature on over-education suggests that many graduates are unable to find employment in graduate jobs and the proportion over-educated has risen over time. Using a simple supply and demand model applied to UK data that defines graduate jobs in terms of the proportion of graduates and/or the graduate earnings markup within occupations, we find that the employment of graduates in non-graduate jobs has declined over time. Hence, there is no evidence of an over-production of graduates in the UK.

This paper examines the parallel trends in education and labour market developments in Australia and Britain. It uses unique information in the WERS and HILDA surveys on reported overskilling in the workplace. To a degree, the overskilling information overcomes the problem of unobserved ability differences and focuses on the actual job-employee mismatch more than the conventional overeducation variables can. The paper finds that the prevalence of overskilling decreases with education at least for Australia, but the wage penalty associated with overskilling increases with education. Although the general patterns of overskilling (prevalence and penalties) are fairly similar between Australia and Britain, the problem appears to be greater in Britain.

This paper uses unique data for the economically inactive to calculate elasticity estimates of the reservation wage and exit probability with respect to state benefits and the arrival rate of job offers, and finds that the inactive react in similar ways to benefit increases as the unemployed.

The U.K. government has recently committed itself to an ambitious 80 per cent employment rate target. Recognising that achieving this aspiration will require significant numbers of the economically inactive to (re-)engage with the labour market, the government has enacted various policy reforms seeking to encourage those on the fringes of the labour market to do so. The present paper uses unique survey data to examine three factors relevant to these issues, namely the desire to work, minimum acceptable wages and the distance the inactive are prepared to travel to work for a given minimum acceptable wage offer.

Earlier papers have found considerable heterogeneity in the returns to degrees in relation to subjects of study, degree classification and higher education institution. In this paper we examine heterogeneity of returns across British regions using the Labour Force Survey. We find substantial variations in the financial rewards available to graduates across regions with much higher returns in London and the South East than elsewhere, although adjusting for regional differences in the cost-of-living narrows such differences considerably. Decompositional analysis, after controlling for regional differences in both occupational and industrial structures, suggests that coefficient effects dominate composition effects, consistent with agglomeration effects being important. These results have implications for the recent changes to student funding in England, Scotland and Wales.

Regional unemployment rates in Great Britain have narrowed dramatically in recent years. However, significant differences still remain in terms of both employment and economic inactivity rates, which may now better reflect relative labour market performance. This paper examines these differences in labour market outcomes using a unified empirical framework that decomposes regional differences in employment, economic inactivity and unemployment into components due to either structural or composition effects. The analysis highlights the important role that ill health and structural deficits currently play in accounting for regional differences in both employment and economic inactivity rates.

In this paper, we estimate the rate of return to first degrees, masters degrees and PhDs in Britain using data from the Labour Force Survey. We estimate returns to broad subject groups and more narrowly defined disciplines, distinguishing returns by gender and attempting to control for variations in student quality across disciplines. The results reveal considerable heterogeneity in returns to particular degree programmes and by gender, which have important policy implications for charging students for the costs of their education.