Abstract
This paper looks at the extent of and reasons for labour market mismatch of female employees. It utilises a novel indicator of miss-match that can take account of differences across workers in more than one dimension of skill and uses data from the British Household Panel Study and its successor ‘Understanding Society’ covering the years 1991-2016. We estimate the incidence of miss-match at 13% to 34% – the proportion changes depending on our specifications. Preliminary work shows that individual and job-specific features drive the effect of female workforce misallocation in the market. The number of children, employment in the public sector and flexibility increase the probability of female mismatch. Recent entrants in the market may experience an expected higher likelihood of mismatch, as well. The risk of unemployment has a significant positive impact. The impact of lone motherhood is hard to pin down, on the other hand, since different specifications give different results.
