Abstract

 The academic literature exhibited that graduate students from various universities in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (hereinafter AJ&K) are not well equipped with the required skills of the labor market. The current study intended to highlight the skill-gap between the demand of the labor market and the acquired skills of the university students by focusing on their qualification and technical skill gap. The researchers collected the primary data from employees working in manufacturing, educational, health, banking and telecommunication sectors through questionnaire from all the districts of AJ&K. The researchers deployed descriptive analysis (mean, standard deviation and frequency) and simple linear regression model to find out the skill mismatch. Overall finding indicated a noteworthy significant disparity between demand and supply of all the skills. In numerous fields, there is dozens of people who are available for a single job that create unemployment and notably advance skilled people are available in social sciences. There was intense competition in medical and to some extent in social sciences. According to the survey, mostly people are dissatisfied with their official grades and corresponding salaries. The study advocates for strategic approach to remove skill mismatch suggesting that people should select a degree which is geared up for a specific career and start own businesses because self- employment is one of the effective ways to gain job satisfaction.