International Trade and the Position of European Low Skilled Labour

Abstract

Low skilled workers in industrialised countries have seen their position in labour markets deteriorate in recent decades. In most European countries the relative unemployment rate between low skilled and high skilled labour grew in the eighties and early nineties (OECD (1997)). Some countries, like the U.K. and the U.S., have furthermore experienced increasing wage inequalities between the high and the low skilled. In the US declining real wages for the lowest income group have even been observed1. All this has occurred against the background of a decrease in the relative supply in low skilled labour, as the share of the population with a university education increased in most industrialised countries and that of those completing only a secondary education declined.2 Though the late nineties seem to have brought slight improvements in inequality figures, the general impression remains that it is mainly the skilled that have been advantaged by of the growth process in industrialised economies.KeywordsTechnological ChangeBargaining PowerSkilled LabourWage InequalityTrade PatternThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.