10% of public employees hold highly qualified positions without having a higher education

Up to 20% more income than their peers of the same educational level can obtain a public official who accesses a position for which he is not qualified, a reality that 74,920 people in the government administration count.

This stems from a study by the economist of the Pontificia Universidad Católica, Juan Bravo, who estimated that 10.2% of the 737,117 public sector wage earners who work in highly qualified jobs have only high school education, and not high school. higher education as required by the position they occupy. (See infographic)

Taking data from the National Employment Survey (ENE) for the July-September 2020 quarter, the researcher determined the mismatch of jobs according to the classification established by the ILO maintained by the National Institute of Statistics (INE). “There is, on the one hand, the educational level of the worker and, on the other, a level of qualification that the job requires depending on the complexity and range of the tasks, which are arranged in 9 categories,” he explains.

Thus, highly qualified jobs are grouped into 1, 2 and 3 categories to which directors, managers and administrators belong; professionals, scientists and intellectuals; technicians and mid-level professionals. The median qualification includes workers in groups 4 to 8 as administrative support personnel; service workers and vendors; farmers and skilled agricultural, forestry and fishing workers; artisans and trades workers; machine operators and assemblers. And in the last group, 9, of low qualification, elementary occupations are counted.

Under this logic, public wage earners with up to high school education who work in highly qualified jobs earn an average of $ 620,682 per month, 20.2% more than the average of $ 516,205 obtained by their peers who work in jobs corresponding to medium or low qualification according to their level of preparation.

“To assess whether the State is efficient in the use of resources, one part is the evaluation of public programs, and another very important is the policy of hiring human resources, since the item of salaries is very relevant. An essential element for the proper use of public resources is that the most suitable people are in the most responsible positions. The inefficiencies caused by this mismatch are paid for by all taxpayers, ”says Bravo.

Among Bravo’s hypotheses to explain why this mismatch occurs, he mentions work experience and personal appointments. “As not all positions in the public sector are chosen by competitive systems, many times in positions of trust there are spaces to handpick, and people are appointed because they are known even though they do not necessarily have the appropriate educational levels for the position” , stresses.

Another factor, he indicates, may be that there are officials who, after having been in the public administration for so long, although they do not have the necessary level of education, have a high background by experience. “There are people who have generated their human capital not through formal education, but through work experience, they have learned many practical things that have allowed them to rise and that has nothing to do with political favors,” he says. However, he also wonders whether it would not be more efficient to hire a person with a higher level of formal education for that position.

Overqualified. But this mismatch does not only happen to one side. There is also a reverse: that people with a complete higher education work in lower-skilled jobs. In 2019, 21.7% of medium and low-skilled jobs were held by workers with a complete higher education, a percentage that increased to 28% in 2020. “In this case we have workers who, although they are counted as employed, are not They are in full employment due to insufficient use of their job skills and, therefore, generate less added value than could be achieved if they carried out work commensurate with their educational level. This also significantly affects the income they obtain from their work ”, emphasizes the specialist.

In fact, according to the study, the underemployed obtained an average salary 32.7% less than their peers who did serve in positions consistent with their studies with an average salary of $ 1,115,427 per month versus $ 750,402 for the former.

In any case, Bravo warns that this situation is very common and worsens in times of high unemployment. “Although underemployment is structural because the professional offer does not necessarily match the need of the labor market, in periods of economic crisis this is exacerbated because people with higher qualifications will be more willing to take any job to avoid being unemployed, which is worse because it does not generate income, ”he says.

Mismatch is not only a reality in the public sector, but also in the private world. Thus, 208,590 private wage earners with only high school education perform highly qualified functions, representing 15% of that group. In terms of income, these workers earn 56% more by earning $ 626,936 versus the average salary of their peers in medium-skilled jobs of $ 401,407.

And on the other hand, 532,025 people with a complete university education work in lower-skilled jobs, being 17.8% of the almost 3 million wage earners who work between category 4 and 8 groups. It is in this section where the greatest loss is noted in terms of income, since an employee with a university level working in a medium-skilled job obtains $ 534,055, 130% than the average salary of their peers in a job according to their qualifications per $ 1,229,265.

“Although in private salaried employment there is also a degree of mismatch in this sense, the difference is that in this case it is the company itself that suffers the consequences and therefore internalizes these decisions. In the case of public employment, it is ultimately the taxpayers who bear the costs of these labor mismatches ”, concludes the economist.