Wage Data Research Articles

Early Portuguese Data for Wage Developments in India: Kannur (Cananor), 1516-1517

This essay discusses new evidence for wage developments in Western India from c. 1300 to 1600. By introducing wage and price data for Kannur (Cananor in Portuguese and British sources) for the years 1516-1517 we contribute to a larger discussion about standards of living in South Asia. These figures from unpublished Portuguese archival sources are compared to Indian ones for the early fourteenth and late sixteenth centuries (no other being available so far). We conclude that the overall purchasing power of wage earners in Kannur in 1516-1517 was not substantially lower than in Delhi 1311. This suggests that real wages remained stable at a low level in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, then rose during the sixteenth century to an all-time high around 1600, before dropping again (if expressed in grain), though never returning to the low levels of 1300-1500.

Economics and Statistics Experts in Wage and Hour Litigation

Complex wage and hour litigation often involves an enormous amount of time records, payroll data, and other related information. Sorting and analyzing the mountain of data from numerous sources can be a colossal and convoluted task. To add to it, there may be gaps of missing employment information that requires some sort of extrapolation or scientifically-backed assumptions to be made in order to assess damages or liability. In this paper, we discuss general wage and hour data management issues, sampling and surveying, and the concept of statistical significance in employment and wage and hour litigation, as well as provide a case study as an example of the use of sampling and surveys in an overtime mis-classification case.

Time-varying wage risk, incomplete markets, and business cycles

Idiosyncratic wage risk exhibits cyclical variation. This study analyzes how such risk fluctuations affect business cycles. I use a heterogeneous agent model with uninsured idiosyncratic wage risk, indivisible labor, and a borrowing constraint. I introduce risk fluctuations as uncertainty shocks and calibrate those shocks using micro-level wage data in the United States. I find that uncertainty shocks affect labor market dynamics through ex-ante uncertainty and ex-post distribution effects. In particular, uncertainty shocks mainly influence the employment of low-productivity individuals, generating negative comovement between total hours worked and average labor productivity. Including uncertainty shocks in addition to aggregate total factor productivity shocks helps the model account for the weakly negative hours–productivity correlation and large fluctuations in the labor wedge seen in the United States.

ANALISIS FAKTOR-FAKTOR YANG MEMPENGARUHI PRODUKTIVITAS TENAGA KERJA DI INDONESIA

This study aims to determine and analyze the effect of wages, education and health on labor produkctivity. Wage are measured using the provincial minimum wage data, education is measured using data on the percentafe of the populationaged 15 years and over who have a high school/vocational education and Indonesia tertiary education and health is measured using data on the percentage of the population experiencing pain complaints. This type of research is descriptive and associative research that describes the research variales amd find out whether there is influencer between the independent variable and the dependent variabel. The type of data in this research is panel power from 2013-2017 in Indonesia. Analysis of the data used in this study is the Panel Regression Analysis. The results of this study indicate that (1) Wage have significant effect on the productivity of Indonesia workers, (2) Education does not have a significant effect on the productivity of Indonesia workers, (3) Health has a significant effect on the productivity of Indonesia workers, (4) Together education and health wages have a significant effect on the productivity of the Indonesia workforce.

Wages in Imperfect Markets: A Post-reforms Study of Indian Manufacturing

This study analyzes the effects of structural market imperfections on wage growth in the Indian manufacturing following concerns over wage inequality post economic reforms, 1991. Using firm-level sales, expenditure, and wage data, we construct indices for market concentration, mark-up, and wage growth for 22 three-digit manufacturing industries for the period 1999–2016. Preliminary observations show falling wage shares in 18 industries, a rising level of concentration in all the industries and a fluctuating mark-up across the period confirming the results of other empirical studies. A panel regression shows that the impact of imperfect markets on wage growth is dialectical: an increase in market concentration has a positive effect on wage growth, whereas an increase in mark-up has a negative effect. The study finds that having fewer firms in a market is more beneficial for wage growth, given that there are prudential regulations to check monopoly behaviour. The study recommends that the Competition Commission of India incorporates these wage concerns when deciding to prohibit the abuse of dominant positions.

Measuring the gender wage gap—a methodological note

ABSTRACTWe propose to estimate the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition by a single-equation model augmented with interactions between the group membership and other predictors. The relative importance of predictors on the discriminatory wage gap is examined by the interaction coefficients, which may lead to very different conclusions than the usual percentage calculations using the detailed decomposition method. Comparisons are made between the traditional interpretations and those suggested here using wage data from Finland. The decomposition analysis suggests that the discriminatory male-female wage gap is largely related to work experience, while our preferred model points to the importance of family gap and working industry.

Two Sides to Same Drought: Measurement and Impact of Ethiopia’s 2015 Historical Drought

Climate change is likely to lead to more frequent and more severe droughts with risk of socio-economic suffering. Utilization of satellite data, available almost instantaneously, is a great tool now providing the backbone of drought monitoring. However, the measurement of drought for socio-economic impact is poorly understood, questioning our ability to deal efficiently with future challenges. This study showcases the challenge by estimating the impact of Ethiopia’s historical 2015 drought, reported to be the worst in five decades, according to different drought indicators. The analysis shows a sever meteorological and self-reported drought, with substantially less rainfall than average and a high share of households reporting drought exposure. Also, more than half of the rural households reported lower consumption in 2016 than two years prior, despite large amounts of food aid were distributed in response to the drought. There are, however, no or limited signs of an agricultural drought, based on vegetation indices and predicted crop losses. Agricultural production, price, and wage data also support 2015 being a normal agricultural year. Further, based on spatial rank correlation, none of the different drought indicators (self-reported, vegetation anomalies, predicted crop losses, or rain anomalies) provide a coherent story of where the drought was worst. In fact, across years the spatial rank correlation between drought indicators shifts sign, highlighting that the inconsistent information on drought from different indicators is not restricted to 2015. In terms of drought impact on consumption, no impact, on average, is found for rain anomalies, predicted crop losses, or vegetation anomalies in the growing season, while a large impact is found for self-reported drought exposure and a smaller impact for vegetation anomalies in the harvest season. The self-reported drought exposure is not a trustworthy drought indicator due to endogeneity, while the impact from vegetation anomalies in the harvest season seems driven by better than average, as opposed to worse than average, vegetation. With indicators showing two such different sides to the same drought and limited spatial correlation between them, the case study calls for more research on the suitability of these indicators, and care and robustness checks when utilizing drought indicators to understand socio-economic impact.

Salary and entry-level requirements for pharmacy technicians compared with other health technologist and technician occupations in Maryland

ObjectivesPharmacy technician programs are experiencing important transitions to new educational standards, an enhanced accreditation framework, and changing requirements by state boards of pharmacy. The requirements are highly variable from state to state and have practical consequences for the pharmacy workforce in terms of technician recruitment, retention, and satisfaction. Using the state of Maryland as a case report, the purpose of this analysis was to compare the requirements necessary to become either a pharmacy technician or another type of health technologist, including board licensure or registration; training, education or certification or both; and 2016 median salary as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Data sourcesThis analysis of salaries and job requirements for health technologists and technicians in the state of Maryland was conducted using the Standard Occupational Classification system and the Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data. SummaryNuclear medicine technologists have the highest median salary at $38.50 per hour. No relationship between increasing entry-level qualifications and salary was identified, but pharmacy technicians were found to have the lowest median salary at $15.10 per hour. Although 5 occupations have median salaries greater than $30, 9 have median hourly salaries less than $20, of which 5 have minimum qualifications mandated by statute and regulation. ConclusionPharmacy technicians have the lowest median salary compared with other health technologists and technicians in Maryland. With pharmacy technicians reporting low satisfaction with salary as a reason for intending to leave an employer, implementing mandatory minimum entry-level requirements without a corresponding increase in salary could lead to a reduction in applicants for positions.

Feminisation of the health workforce and wage conditions of health professions: an exploratory analysis

BackgroundThe feminisation of the global health workforce presents a unique challenge for human resource policy and health sector reform which requires an explicit gender focus. Relatively little is known about changes in the gender composition of the health workforce and its impact on drivers of global health workforce dynamics such as wage conditions. In this article, we use a gender analysis to explore if the feminisation of the global health workforce leads to a deterioration of wage conditions in health.MethodsWe performed an exploratory, time series analysis of gender disaggregated WageIndicator data. We explored global gender trends, wage gaps and wage conditions over time in selected health occupations. We analysed a sample of 25 countries over 9 years between 2006 and 2014, containing data from 970,894 individuals, with 79,633 participants working in health occupations (48,282 of which reported wage data). We reported by year, country income level and health occupation grouping.ResultsThe health workforce is feminising, particularly in lower- and upper-middle-income countries. This was associated with a wage gap for women of 26 to 36% less than men, which increased over time. In lower- and upper-middle-income countries, an increasing proportion of women in the health workforce was associated with an increasing gender wage gap and decreasing wage conditions. The gender wage gap was pronounced in both clinical and allied health professions and over lower-middle-, upper-middle- and high-income countries, although the largest gender wage gaps were seen in allied healthcare occupations in lower-middle-income countries.ConclusionThese results, if a true reflection of the global health workforce, have significant implications for health policy and planning and highlight tensions between current, purely economic, framing of health workforce dynamics and the need for more extensive gender analysis. They also highlight the value of a more nuanced approach to health workforce planning that is gender sensitive, specific to countries’ levels of development, and considers specific health occupations.

Gender Differences in Labour Losses Associated with Smoking-Related Mortality.

The aim of this paper was to estimate the number of premature deaths, years of potential productive life lost (YPPLL) and labour losses attributable to tobacco smoking due to premature death by gender for the Spanish population. The human capital approach was applied. Employment, gross wage and death data were obtained from the Spanish National Institute of Statistics. Relative risks of death due to cigarette smoking and former smoking were applied. The base case used an annual discount rate of 3% and an annual labour productivity growth rate of 1%. Univariate deterministic sensitivity analysis was performed on discount rates and labour productivity growth rates. Between 2002 and 2016, smoking was estimated to cause around 13,171–13,781 annual deaths in the population under 65 years of age (legal retirement age) in Spain. This increase was mostly due to female deaths. YPPLLs for females have increased over the years, while for males they have fallen markedly. Labour losses associated with smoking mortality ranged from €2269 million in 2002 to €1541 in 2016 (base year 2016). In fact, labour productivity losses have decreased over the years for men (−39.8%) but increased sharply for women (101.6%). The evolution of monetary value of lost productivity due to smoking mortality shows clearly differentiated trends by gender.

Neoliberal Redistributive Policy: The US Net Social Wage in the Early Twenty-First Century

This paper estimates the net social wage—the difference between labor benefits and labor taxation—from 1959 to 2012 in the United States using two different methodologies. During this period the average NSW1/GDP and NSW2/GDP ratio are 1.3 and −3.8 percent, respectively. This paper finds a deviation in the net social wage data starting in 2002, suggesting greater redistribution to US workers in the early twenty-first century than in the twentieth century. This paper argues that the increase in the US net social wage in the early twenty-first century is being caused by a combination of cyclical, structural, and secular factors. US redistributive policy should be understood as stabilizing and subsidizing the social reproduction of labor.JEL Classification: H5, E62, B5

How Prevalent Is Downward Rigidity in Nominal Wages? International Evidence from Payroll Records and Pay Slips

For more than 80 years, many macroeconomic analyses have been premised on the assumption that workers’ nominal wage rates cannot be cut. Contrary evidence from household surveys reasonably has been discounted on the grounds that the measurement of frequent wage cuts might be an artifact of reporting error. This article summarizes a more recent wave of studies based on more accurate wage data from payroll records and pay slips. By and large, these studies indicate that, except in extreme circumstances (when nominal wage cuts are either legally prohibited or rendered beside the point by very high inflation), nominal wage cuts from one year to the next appear quite common, typically affecting 15–25 percent of job stayers in periods of low inflation.

Minimum wage impacts on Han-minority Workers’ wage distribution and inequality in urban china

This paper examines the distributional impacts of the minimum wage on the urban wages of Han-minority workers and the implications for urban inequality. County-level minimum wage data is combined with recent proprietary household survey data representative of China’s ethnically diverse areas. The identification strategy relies on an unconditional quantile regression framework that takes into account policy endogeneity using an instrument variable approach. The findings show that minimum wages lead to wage compression along the bottom and middle parts of the urban wage distribution. The minimum wage effects are larger for lower-skilled workers located in ethnic minority counties or that belong to an ethnic minority group. Counterfactual analysis further shows that minimum wages help to significantly reduce aggregate urban wage inequality: increasing minimum wages from a counterfactual benchmark to their observed levels, an average increase of 26%, reduces the Gini coefficient of wages by 10–12%.

The Inequality of Pay in Pre-modern Germany, Late 15th Century to 1889

Abstract The study explores relative labour scarcity in a broad range of activities and relates it to the long-run dynamics of structural change, supply and demand of human capital, and the inequality between men and women. It builds on two recent compilations of wage data and complements these with additional information, particularly on wages in agriculture. From the second quarter of the seventeenth century the skill premium was stable; the first phase of industrialization did not lead to a differentiation of the individual return to human capital. Labour demand from the modern sector stabilized real wages of males from the second quarter of the eighteenth century at least and increased them from the mid-1850s onwards. This opened a wedge between the agricultural and the non-agricultural sectors already for considerable time before the beginnings of industrialization. Finally, the modern era saw two phases of labour market segmentation along gender lines, one in the later sixteenth and the early seventeenth centuries, the other from the 1840s to the 1870s.

Relationship between regulatory barriers to entry and pharmacy technician wages.

Pharmacy technicians are vital to the operation of pharmacies, and national pharmacy associations have advocated for mandatory education and training requirements. While these requirements may improve patient safety, there is a risk that laws and regulations which impose substantial education and training requirements on technicians could create barriers to entry which restrict the workforce and increase wages. This study has two objectives: 1) Describe changes in barriers to entry and wages over time; and 2) Evaluate the correlation between changing barriers to entry and pharmacy technician wages. Data come from Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment Statistics from 1997 to 2017 and National Association of Boards of Pharmacy Surveys of Pharmacy Law from 1997 to 2014. A barrier to entry was defined as adoption of registration, licensure, or certification. Wage data was adjusted to 2017 dollars using the Consumer Price Index. Ordinary least squares regression evaluated the correlation between the proportion of states which had at least one barrier to entry and wages. An interrupted time series model estimated the impact of adopting a barrier to entry on the trend in technician wages over time. Technician wages increased between 1997 and 2007 but remained flat between 2008 and 2017. A strong correlation was observed between the proportion of states which had at least one barrier to entry and technician wages (R2 = 0.93, p < 0.0001). However, the interrupted time series models did not identify any relationship between adoption of a barrier to entry and the trend in technician wages (p = 0.363). This research suggests adoption of legal/regulatory barriers to entry did not have a significant influence on the trend in technician wages over time. More research is needed to evaluate the impact of barriers to entry on non-wage practice variables, such as privileges and satisfaction.

INFLATION AND WAGE RIGIDITY/FLEXIBILITY IN THE SHORT RUN

A recent literature uses accurate wage data from payroll records and provides compelling evidence against the conventional belief that nominal wages are downward sticky. This paper provides a unique contribution to this literature by conducting a formal analysis of the role of inflation in cyclical wage rigidity/flexibility. Analysis of payroll‐based wage data from the Korean labor market for the period 1971–2014 finds that the degree of downward nominal wage flexibility is countercyclical, and the countercyclicality becomes stronger during a deflationary, relative to inflationary, recession. This serves as a counter‐example to the conventional theory of cyclical wage rigidity. (JEL E24, E32, J30, J64)

Causal inference by quantile regression kink designs

The quantile regression kink design (QRKD) is proposed by empirical researchers, but its causal interpretation remains unknown. We show that the QRKD estimand measures a weighted average of heterogeneous marginal effects at respective conditional quantiles of outcome given a designed kink point. We also derive limit processes for the QRKD estimator to conduct statistical inference on heterogeneous treatment effects using the QRKD. Applying our methods to the Continuous Wage and Benefit History Project (CWBH) data, we find heterogeneous positive causal effects of unemployment insurance benefits on unemployment durations. These effects are larger for individuals with longer unemployment durations.

Should I stay or should I go? What we can learn from working patterns of Central and Eastern European labour migrants about the nature of present-day migration

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we examine the extent to which the employment histories of Central and Eastern EU (CEE) labour migrants exhibit patterns of temporary, circular or settlement migration. We expect to find these diverse and changeable patterns following the phenomenon of ‘New European Migration’. By distinguishing between working patterns we are able to describe actual migration behaviour to the destination country more accurately. We use wage data to track a cohort of all employees who worked in the Netherlands in June 2010, for a period of five years. Our findings show that the majority of CEE labour migrants stopped working as employees in the Netherlands within five years, mostly after an uninterrupted single period of employment. In addition, a third of CEE labour migrants engage in settlement migration, working continuously in the Netherlands for a long period. Only a very small proportion can be considered as circular migrants. This contradicts our expectations regarding New European Migration, that there would be fewer labour migrants with uninterrupted periods of work and more labour migrants working for shorter periods.

Deskilling among Manufacturing Production Workers

I use new occupational wage and employment data from more than 160 countries to document a global decline in the demand for skilled production workers in manufacturing since the 1950s. They tended to work in craftsman occupations, and their declining relative wages and employment have been associated with increasing capital intensities of production. My findings reconcile conflicting characterizations of technological change throughout the 20th century as either ‘skill biased’ or ‘deskilling’, and point to a globally decreasing number of manufacturing jobs in which workers with little formal education can acquire significant marketable skills.

How Prevalent is Downward Rigidity in Nominal Wages? Evidence from Payroll Records in Washington State

For more than 80 years, many macroeconomic analyses have been premised on the assumption that workers’ nominal wage rates cannot be cut. The U.S. evidence on this assumption has been inconclusive because of distortions from reporting error in household surveys. Following a British literature, we reconsider the issue with more accurate wage data from the payroll records of most employers in the State of Washington over the period 2005-2015. For every one of the 40 four-quarters-apart periods for which we observe year-to-year wage changes, we find that at least 20 percent of job stayers experience nominal wage reductions.