The Mismatched Worker (review)

Arne Kalleberg has written a thoughtful and engaging overview of the U.S. labor market. The book is part of a Contemporary Societies series, envisaged as a series of essay-style books by leading sociologists that apply changes in sociology's theoretical and substantive concerns to particular sub-fields within it. However, this book in many respects represents continuity with previous sociological studies of work and labor markets as Kalleberg focuses on a theme that he has studied since graduate school: "the structural conditions that affect people's ability to find jobs that match their qualifications, interests and needs."(vii)

The book provides a wide-ranging review of current research about the labor market, especially in the United States. This is organized through the lens of "labor market mismatches" or situations where there is a lack of fit between workers and their jobs, normally resulting in problems and difficulties not only for workers but also their families, employers and society in general.(4)

As a review, the book succeeds admirably in synthesizing a vast array of data and findings in a very readable fashion. The reader seeking a quick overview of the major patterns in U.S. labor markets will find the book an enlightening and relatively easy read. Kalleberg reviews the data on seven labor market mismatches. Workers can be mismatched in terms of their skills — some are overqualified, others underqualified — or their location, through spatial mismatches with suitable jobs. Workers and jobs can be mismatched in terms of working hours and the demands of the job — with some workers being overworked while others are underworked. Furthermore, workers can experience mismatches in terms of the intersection between work and life outside the workplace — in terms of both earnings mismatches and work-family mismatches.

The evidence assembled for the co-existence and persistence of these mismatches is compelling. Each is structured by gender, race, class, the life course, power in the labor market and institutional structures. Some appear to be becoming even more intractable — for example, the co-existence of overworked and underworked sections of the labor force. The book offers policy recommendations for each of the mismatches and ultimately argues that a strengthening of workers' power in the labor market and their control over their work situations are essential to tackling these structural problems.

The concept of mismatches provides a useful way of organizing these varying patterns. The chapter on concepts and theories argues that structural lags, closed employment relationships, power relations in the labor market, loose coupling of institutions and social networks can all produce mismatches. However, the potential contributions of the concept could be developed further.

The collection of evidence in the book is a fairly comprehensive indictment of labor markets' failures in precisely the area where markets are supposed to work best — allocative efficiency. However, this analysis would benefit from a more explicit engagement with economic sociology's focus on the social embedding of markets — both in terms of power relations and the unintended consequences of social relations. In the process, such an approach would add a much needed discussion of outcomes to economic sociology.

Kalleberg's concern to outline policy suggestions and his emphasis on tracing mismatches to workers' lack of power and control is a contribution to this kind of approach. Nonetheless, it would be useful to hear more about the workplace "bargains" that generate and reproduce these persistent structural mismatches, and which actors are enforcing and sustaining those bargains.

Finally, to the book's credit, it references a great deal of evidence from outside the United States. However, linked to the suggestion of a greater engagement with economic sociology, a more developed comparative analysis might have outlined more clearly the kinds of re-arranging of institutions and power relations that might be possible, even within the U.S. labor market.

The book is broadly consistent with much recent work that suggests that excessive employer power can undermine economic efficiency, and that even employers themselves can benefit from what Streeck has called "beneficial constraints." Kalleberg's...