Do educational requirements in vacancies match the educational attainments of jobholders? An analysis of web-based data for 279 occupations in the Czech Republic

European labour market policies aim to develop an early-warning tool for mismatches by monitoring job vacancies. Few studies have been able to measure these mismatches, among others because systematic information on educational requirements in vacancies is lacking. Our study explores mismatch for occupations by investigating the relationship between demand & supply ratios and the vacancies’ educational requirements and jobholders’ attainments. It compares the distributional characteristics of requirements and attainments using data of 14,092 vacancies of the web-database of the Czech Public Employment Service with data of 10,364 jobholders from the WageIndicator web-survey, merged into a database aggregated by 4-digit level occupations (totalling to 279 occupations). The demand & supply ratio is unbalanced with one fourth of the 279 occupations in excessive demand and one third in excessive supply. A high demand correlates with lower educational requirements. At lower skill levels, requirements are more condensed, but attainments less so. At higher skill levels, requirements are less condensed, but attainments more so. For most occupations the lowest attainment is at least one level above the required level, pointing to an overeducated workforce. For all skill levels the mean educational requirements are lower when occupations are in high demand, though not all results are statistically significant.