Skills and Wages in European Labour Markets: Structure and Change

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter presents an empirical analysis of structure and change in skills and wages in five European countries: Germany, Spain, France, Great Britain, and Sweden. The discussion begins with an overview of previous research in three interrelated fields of relevance for the empirical analyses: (a) the structure and change of skill demand in Western Europe and the United States; (b) the connections between social class and skills; and (c) international variations in educational systems and school-to-work linkages. It then looks at a number of outstanding issues in need of further empirical analysis. Among the main findings are that firm-based skill formation seems to be more widespread and more important in Britain than in several other European countries considered here, including Germany and Sweden; also that in line with the production regime perspective, women are disadvantaged in firm-based skill formation; and finally that there is no strong indication of an interaction effect between class and gender, such that women's disadvantage relative to men is larger in the service class than in the working class.