Beyond Skill Shortages: Mapping Multidimensional Skill Imbalances in OECD Labour Markets

Skill shortages are often treated as a general labour market constraint, yet they may coexist with surpluses in other skill domains. This letter provides a multidimensional assessment of skill imbalances across 34 OECD countries using the OECD Skills for Jobs database. Combining descriptive analysis, hierarchical clustering and principal component analysis (PCA), this study identifies country-level profiles and latent dimensions of cross-country heterogeneity. The findings show that skill imbalances are not reducible to a digital skills gap but reflect differentiated configurations of shortages and surpluses across labour markets. The letter contributes to the skill mismatch literature by showing the value of analysing shortages and surpluses jointly rather than as a single aggregate problem.