Mismatch between education and employment can negatively impact immigrants’ health

A study selected as an Innovation in Aging 2025 Editor’s Choice article explored the long-term health impacts of highly educated immigrant workers being far overqualified for their jobs. The study, led by researchers at the University of Chicago, found that the degree of overqualification is correlated with worse health outcomes even when accounting for differences in income and health insurance.

“Education-labor mismatch signals to us one of the ways in which immigrants are stratified in the labor market and in U.S. society overall,” said first author Aresha Martinez-Cardoso, PhD, Assistant Professor of Public Health Sciences at the University of Chicago. “We wanted to study this issue more deeply and explore the potential implications for people's health.”

The researchers quantified education-labor mismatch in both immigrants and U.S.-born people by comparing workers’ years of education to the standard level of education for their occupational category. They focused on older adults to capture a more holistic picture of labor trajectories and observe downstream health effects that can take many years to manifest.

The analyses showed that immigrants with more years of education outmatching their employment had significantly worse outcomes when it came to self-reported health, diabetes, smoking, body fat composition, and high blood pressure. In contrast, the researchers saw no significant associations for U.S.-born workers, except for self-reported health.

“With this paper, we add to a growing body of research that shows the ways in which the migration experience and many of the social inequalities that immigrants face are unique and might be particularly noxious to their health,” Martinez-Cardoso said.

She theorized that immigrants are more likely to face circumstances that force them into non-ideal labor opportunities, while their U.S.-born peers at a similar education level who experience labor mismatch may have chosen more intentionally not to use their degrees.

Even when the researchers controlled for factors like income and health insurance status in their analyses, immigrants with education-labor mismatch had significantly higher rates of chronic diseases like diabetes and high blood pressure.

“It shows that our health is affected by factors far beyond the obvious,” said co-author Woorin Jang, who contributed to the research as a UChicago undergraduate and is now a student at the UChicago Pritzker School of Medicine. “I found it really interesting that although immigrants tend to come to this country with better health — partly because healthier people are more likely to migrate — they accumulate years of stressors like language barriers, discrimination, and labor education mismatch, which ultimately lead to higher rates of dementia and other health issues compared to U.S.-born people.”

In the United States’ highly work-centric culture, the occupational landscape and workplace environments can be central to immigrant experiences. The researchers argue that there are multiple practical takeaways and potential ways to address their findings on societal levels.

“In so many policy conversations and debates about immigration, proposed solutions involve prioritizing highly skilled immigrants to meet needs and fill gaps in the U.S. labor market,” pointed out co-author Laura Chen, who contributed to the research as a UChicago undergraduate. “Our results show that there are a lot more nuances and issues to consider.”

Broadly, recognizing the health consequences of education-labor mismatch can inform policies aimed at improving job quality, workforce integration, and healthcare access. One clear step would be for professional organizations, policymakers, and institutions of higher education to collaboratively create better systems for credential transfer, so that someone with education and experience can become licensed and certified to practice in their field in the U.S. with minimal duplication of training.

“At one point, we called this ‘Project Brain Waste’ because so many immigrants come here with education and skills that they don’t get to use, and it turns out that’s not only inefficient for the labor market and the economy but also detrimental to individuals’ health,” Martinez-Cardoso said. “In a way, our team set out to investigate the impact of the failed American Dream for many immigrants. Understanding these nuances and challenges is the first step toward designing better systems, policies, and social environments for everyone’s health.”

“Association of education labor overmatch and health among U.S.-born and immigrant older adults” was published in Innovation in Aging in July 2025 and selected as a 2025 Editor’s Choice Article in January 2026. Co-authors are Aresha Martinez-Cardoso, Amel Omari, Laura Chen, Woorin Jang and Annie Ro.