An analysis of educational mismatch on wages in the agroindustrial sector

The food industry is one of the most important industries in developed economies. The progressive professionalization of its workforce and the persistent demand for low-skilled employment in this sector may be leading to educational mismatch with its concomitant effects on wages and productivity. Yet the economic literature has not addressed wage structures, gender differences, and the composition of the labor force together in this food industry. We analyzed the effects of educational mismatch on wages in the Spanish food industry from a gender perspective. To this end, we used data from the 2018 Wage Structure Survey collected by the Spanish National Institute of Statistics. We applied the overeducated, required educated, undereducated specification to these data. The main results show that educational mismatch leads to gender wage differentials in this sector. The analysis also shows that the Spanish food industry places more value on men with adequate education and women with some level of overeducation. The results on occupational segregation show that the food industry penalizes access to female-dominated occupations, and that this wage disadvantage is greater for female workers. We also observed wage differences in the remuneration of certain personal and professional factors that could be worsening the gender differentials in the Spanish food industry [EconLit Citations: I26, J16, J21, J24, J31].