Labour market job matching for UK minority ethnic groups

Estimates of over education from different ethnic groups are presented using a new method of calculating over education and data from the UK Labour Force Survey. Calibrated against existing mean methods, the new approach leads to lower levels of over education for men and women. While the overall extent of over education has similarities with earlier studies, the differences between ethnic groups are far less than those found in some studies and fall even further when we control for other productivity related differences. Gender differences can be partially explained by differences in working part-time, whereas some ethnic differences are exacerbated slightly by being temporarily over educated, as well as by differences in the subject of degree.