Recently, the Neet (Not in Employement, Education, or Training) phenomenon has been of increasing interest internationally, in particular in relation to its social costs. At the same time, a grey area still exists, which is only marginally explored. This is represented by the OENQE (Over Educated in Not Qualified Employment) who cannot find a job that is either adequately qualified or even less qualified. The present paper investigates  the following research question: do OENQEs’ personal factors generate too high expectations in comparison to what the market can offer? This paper focuses on the Italian case study by analysing data from the Italian Survey on Household incomes and wealth (SHIW) carried out the Bank of Italy, for the period 2004-2014.