The impact of overeducation on job outcomes

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of overeducation on several job attitudes and outcomes. The study is based on cross-sectional survey data from 398 Saudis in the labor market. Drawing upon a person-job fit theory, two different self-assessments—direct self-assessment and indirect self-assessment—are used to examine how overeducation influences job satisfaction, organizational commitment, turnover intentions, and job performance. The results of the hierarchical regressions suggest that overeducation across the two measures is significantly negatively related to job satisfaction and organizational commitment, while significantly positively related to turnover intentions, even after controlling for different confounding variables. However, no significant impact was found for job performance. Furthermore, despite the slight differences in terms of the magnitudes of their effects, the two self-assessment measures of overeducation largely overlap and yield similar conclusions. These findings confirm that except for job performance, overeducation—as a form of person–job misfit—is an important predictor of job attitudes and outcomes. The current study extends the existing literature by providing comparative empirical evidence on the impact of overeducation in Saudi Arabia