Educational Mismatches in the Dutch Labor Market: The Impact of Overqualification and Underqualification on Job Satisfaction

Abstract

In recent years, the number of highly educated workers in the Netherlands has reached record highs. Yet a degree doesn’t always guarantee a job that matches one’s qualifications. Many people end up overqualified or underqualified for the work they do, this can affect motivation, performance, and wellbeing. At the same time, labour shortages are rising across key sectors, and qualified workers find themselves in jobs unrelated to their attained education. This growing mismatch points to a structural problem: not just a lack of people, but people in the wrong places. While educational mismatches have been studied before, most research focuses on economic outcomes like wages. Much less is known about how mismatches affect job satisfaction, or how this varies between different groups and work contexts. This study therefore explores the question: to what extent do overqualification and underqualification affect job satisfaction in the Dutch labour market, and how do these effects differ by gender and sector? Using data from the European Social Survey (ESS11), multivariate regression analyses and three-way interactions were conducted on a sample of N = 395 employed individuals in the Netherlands. Educational mismatch was measured objectively, while job satisfaction was proxied using indicators of mental and physical well-being. The findings show that underqualification is clearly linked to lower job satisfaction, especially in terms of physical well-being. Overqualification, on the contrary, showed small positive effects in some models. Gender and sectoral effects were modest but suggestive: underqualified women reported lower satisfaction than underqualified men, although the reverse was true in some sectors. This study contributes to the existing literature by explicitly considering sectoral variation, an approach rarely taken due to the fluid and evolving nature of sectors. The findings highlight that underqualification poses a more consistent threat to job satisfaction than overqualification and underscores the importance of addressing mismatch through gender- and sector-sensitive policies.