Education-job (mis)match and interregional migration:Italian university graduates’ transition to work

This paper analyses the micro-level determinants of the education-job (mis)matches of recent university graduates in Italy. As the Italian graduate population has experienced increasing internal migration, we focus in particular on the role of interregional migration in driving education-job match. The methodology takes into account both the endogenous relationship between migration and employment, and the self-selection bias between employment and education-job (mis)match. Using a survey on Italian graduates’ entry into the labour market, we find that whilst migration at the national level is confirmed to have a positive role in both finding a job and decreasing the probability of overeducation, robust differences emerge when looking at the subnational dimension. Indeed, the Northern regions by receiving inflows of Southern graduates that manage to attain a good education-job match in the recipient labour markets, are apparently reaping part of the return to the investment in university education bore in the South