Madrid (EFE) among the countries of the European Union (EU), whose average is 22.2%.
This rate, prepared by Eurostat and updated with data from 2022, measures the proportion of people who hold a job that requires less training than that obtained with respect to the population of working age.
Since 2013, the first year of the Eurostat historical series, Spain has been at the head of Europe in terms of workers with more training than their job requires.
According to the active population survey (EPA), at the end of 2022, 46.2% of the employed had higher education, being the largest group by level of studies, followed by those who have completed up to the first stage of secondary education ( 25.2%) and those who have completed up to the second stage of secondary school (13.66%).
Experts from human resources companies consulted by EFE have pointed out a lack of professionals with scientific, technological, engineering and mathematical degrees, since the demand for workers is increasing at a faster rate than the supply of graduates.
Likewise, CEOE sources have warned of the mismatch between training and the company’s needs for new profiles to make the double ecological and digital transition, as well as the failure in the professional orientation of young people.
More university students and a “mismatch in degrees”
Fedea researcher Marcel Jansen points out in statements to EFE that “the number of university students has grown more than the number of jobs” that demand this degree, so that many graduates “end up in jobs below their training.”
And he adds that “there is a clear mismatch in the qualifications and fields of the students and the demand of the companies”.
“The educational offer is poorly linked to what companies need,” sums up Jansen, who points out that, although the Spanish labor market demands the same as the European one, there is a divergence in the supply of workers.
This entails, according to the Fedea researcher, that those people who occupy a position that requires less training have “little satisfaction” and become demotivated, which generates “a lot of mobility”, something that companies do not like, so that overqualification “It does not have a positive effect on wages or careers.”
For his part, the director of Randstad Research, Valentín Bote, affirmed in a conversation with EFE that a job can have adequate salary and working conditions, but that they do not coincide with the aspirations of the person “because they are in that situation of overqualification”. .
“A person who has a university degree but has graduated in a field of knowledge for which professional opportunities are very limited has to look for other options and many times they end up in situations of overqualification”, explains Bote, who indicates that ” it is inevitable” that someone who has made the effort to study a career “ends frustrated” with his job.
The maladjustment of the educational system
According to Jansen, this situation is explained because the Spanish educational system “adapts very poorly and very slowly to the needs of companies”, although it also has to do with students, who choose which degree to study without taking into account the insertion labor of this
“We need to greatly improve the orientation of students so that they know what can really do well for them, and we must encourage them to choose careers with good job prospects,” continues the Fedea researcher, who says he feels “frustrated” by the “enormous waste of talent”, in relation to students who are studying degrees with little job opportunity.
Along the same lines, the director of Randstad Research assures that, although the number of graduates has grown in the last decade, engineering and computer science have decreased and “they are fields of study in which professional opportunities have increased sharply in recent years.” time”.
Jansen insists that it is not just a matter of generating university students, but rather that studies are taken that fit with the “talent” of the students and that are related to the labor market.