The impact of education on job satisfaction in the first job

Abstract

Relying on survey data for Flemish 23 year old workers, we estimate three ordinal regression models to clear out the determinants of job satisfaction in the first job. Special attention goes to the influence of education. The results indicate that higher educated people seem more satisfied than lower educated people because they get a better job. When we control for all characteristics of the job, a negative relationship shows up, with higher educated people being less happy about their first job. Our results also suggest that giving young employees the possibility to use their skills in a varied job contributes strongly to job satisfaction. The relationship between educational mismatch and job satisfaction is ambiguous. Overeducation has a clear negative impact on job satisfaction, but for undereducation we obtain different results for men and women. In contrast to existing literature we also find a gender effect for young workers and a positive impact of working in a large company. We observe no impact of the occupational status of the parents nor of the characteristics of the employment contract.

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