org.hibernate.exception.SQLGrammarException when trying to save record - spring-boot

Question

I am new to the world of JPA and hibernate. I have an entity EMPLOYEE for which I am trying to save a simple empty record but I keep on getting the following exception:
org.springframework.dao.InvalidDataAccessResourceUsageException: could not extract ResultSet; SQL [n/a]; nested exception is org.hibernate.exception.SQLGrammarException: could not extract ResultSet] with root cause java.sql.SQLSyntaxErrorException: Unknown column 'employee0_.employee_id' in 'field list'
My entity class looks like this:
package com.workforcesoftware.groupmanagementservice.data.entities;
import javax.persistence.*;
import java.io.Serializable;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Objects;
#Entity
#Table(name = "employee")
public class Employee implements Serializable {
#Id
#Column(name = "employeeId")
private String employeeId;
#Column(name = "displayEmployeeId")
private String displayEmployeeId;
#Column(name = "accountId")
private String accountId;
#Column(name = "userId")
private String userId;
private String firstName;
private String lastName;
private String displayName;
private String birthDate;
private String phoneNumber;
private String originalHireDate;
private String externalMatchId;
#OneToMany(mappedBy = "employee")
private List<EffectiveDatedEmployee> effectiveDatedEmployees;
#OneToMany(mappedBy = "employee")
private List<Job> jobs;
public Employee(){ }
public Employee(String employeeId, String displayEmployeeId, String accountId, String userId, String firstName,
String lastName, String displayName, String birthDate, String phoneNumber, String originalHireDate,
String externalMatchId, List<EffectiveDatedEmployee> effectiveDatedEmployees, List<Job> jobs) {
this.employeeId = employeeId;
this.displayEmployeeId = displayEmployeeId;
this.accountId = accountId;
this.userId = userId;
this.firstName = firstName;
this.lastName = lastName;
this.displayName = displayName;
this.birthDate = birthDate;
this.phoneNumber = phoneNumber;
this.originalHireDate = originalHireDate;
this.externalMatchId = externalMatchId;
this.effectiveDatedEmployees = effectiveDatedEmployees;
this.jobs = jobs;
}
}
My repository interface looks like:
public interface EmployeeRepository extends JpaRepository<Employee, String> {
}
Finally, my repository calling code looks like this:
Employee employee = new Employee("1", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", "", null, null);
employeeRepository.save(employee);