Skilled Workers on the Rural Labor Market: Supply vs. Demand

Abstract

The paper analyzes the correlation between supply and demand for skilled labour on the rural labour market. The paper defines skilled workers as those having tertiary professional education. The empirical basis for the research is constituted by the Labour Force Survey data between 2005 and 2015. It has been proved that in this period the supply of the skilled labour was steadily on the increase that was determined by the growth of both the number and share of people with higher education. The demand for the skilled labour of rural workers showed slower growth rates that resulted in an increasing gap between supply and demand. The research proves that education and qualification of rural workers are being underutilized, and the scale of educationoccupation mismatch has been rather big. The most obvious contradiction between education underutilization and its non-purpose use - when people do not work in accordance with their specialization - refer to the workers with technical and agricultural training.