Minimum Wages,On-the-Job Training,and Wage Growth

Using data from the Employment Opportunities Pilot Project, we examine the relationships between minimum wages, wage growth, and on-the-job training. We find that minimum wage jobs exhibit less wage growth than other jobs, particularly for men. We find no evidence, however, of a unique minimum wage effect on training opportunities. We conclude that indirect methods of proxying training with wage growth can be misleading as they fail to distinguish whether the reduced wage growth of workers on minimum wage jobs results from their receiving less training than other workers or whether it is strictly a result of the wage determination process.     

上海市最低工资标准的合理性——基于最低工资收入者角度的实证分析

最低工资制度是世界各国普遍采用的劳动保障制度,其目的在于维护劳动者取得劳动报酬的合法权利,保障劳动者尤其是低收入劳动者及其家庭成员的基本生活。文章依据相关法规政策规定的最低工资标准制定时需要考虑的因素,从保障低收入劳动者基本生活需要的角度,应用统计性描述方法对1993-2012年上海市最低工资与职工平均工资、人均GDP、最低社会保障线、人均消费性支出等进行分析。分析结果发现上海市最低工资与职工月平均工资的比远低于40%~60%的国际标准,与人均GDP的比值低于全国平均水平,表明上海市最低工资标准偏低,需要进一步改进或完善相关政策。     

最低工资文献综述

最低工资制度是国家通过立法的形式干预工资分配的一种制度,该制度设计是为了保障低收入劳动者,但是在实施中却引来了很多的争论。对此经济学家们分别从理论和实证的角度对实施最低工资的后果进行了分析。文章尝试对这些不同的观点进行梳理,以期能对最低工资的研究提供参考。     

Minimum Wage Regulation in China and Its Applications to Migrant Workers in the Urban Labor Market

Using data at micro and city levels, the present paper explores the policy evolution of the minimum wage system in China, and examines its coverage for migrant workers. The analysis indicates that minimum wage policy has been substantially improved in terms of both coverage and the level of the minimum wage standard, but that the current policy tool that relies on the monthly wage rate is not effective. Because migrant workers tend to work more hours, use of an hourly wage rate is more appropriate than a monthly wage rate.     

最低工资制度的执行力度和影响因素研究——以农村转移劳动力为例

文章利用2011年浙江省杭州市最低工资标准调整的契机,调查分析了新的工资标准实施前后最低工资制度在农村转移劳动力中的执行力度及其影响因素。研究发现,工资标准的提高使农村转移劳动力的最低工资标准执行力度由原先的80%降低到70%左右;最低工资制度在提升劳动者收入上发挥了一些效果。研究显示,企业性质、企业规模和企业所处的地理位置均是影响最低工资制度执行力度的因素;劳动者的人力资本水平也是影响执行力度的重要因素。文章认为,当前的最低工资制度存在着工资标准过低和执行力度不足的问题,大幅度削弱了该政策提升劳动者工资的作用。     

Non‐compliance with the Minimum Wage Law when Completely New Minimum Wage Laws Are Established: The Case of South Africa

Abstract: Using the case of South Africa, we study compliance with the minimum wage law when completely new minimum wage levels are established. By even the best estimate, the compliance rate in South Africa would not exceed 40 per cent for the agricultural sector and 30 per cent for the domestic worker sector. The compliance rates by subpopulation groups reveal that the compliance rate is low where the cost to comply with the minimum wage law is high, implying that government inspections are not done where they are likely to have the highest payoff. However, if the government tries to enforce the policy more strictly, the poor/less skilled would be adversely affected.     

Wage increases, wage convergence, and the Lewis turning point in China

We examine the wage trends of ordinary workers and the wage convergence between unskilled and skilled workers in China. First, we find that wages in all non-agricultural sectors, wages of migrant workers, and wages of hired workers in the agricultural sector have increased dramatically since 2003. Second, through comparing wage differentials between migrant and urban resident workers and between heterogeneous education groups within migrant workers, and by investigating the changes in the contribution of the returns to education to wage differentials, we find that the wages of unskilled and skilled workers have converged. Both the increasing wage trends and wage convergence are interpreted as evidence supporting the hypothesis that China has passed what can be called the Lewis turning point in the industrial sector. We conclude that the sustainability of economic growth in China requires an upgrading of labor market institutions to accommodate the merging of the rural and urban labor forces.     

The Determinants of China's Minimum Wage Rates

We use a highly disaggregated panel of macro data and minimum wages at the county level to investigate the processes behind minimum wage adjustments in China. Relying on random effects models, spatial econometrics techniques, and multilevel analyses, we document that a comparatively small number of economic variables – including the local price level and GDP per capita – are important determinants of minimum wage rates. Interactions between adjacent counties and counties of the same administrative type, and centralized mechanisms, particularly at the provincial level, also play an important role in explaining the variance in minimum wage rates across counties. Finally, we show that China's provinces are the key players for setting minimum wage rates and that, when they do so, they are not uniform in the way they weigh different economic variables.     

The Part-Time Wage Gap: a Career Perspective

Summary  Because promotions are an important source of wage growth, we argue that the low incidence of promotions among part-time workers will contribute to the emergence of the part-time wage gap. We test this claim using Dutch employer–employee matched data. We find that the part-time wage gap is absent among young school leavers, but that it is well established among more mature workers. Moreover, we find that promotions account for a wage growth of about eight log points. Finally, workers in part-time jobs experience a lower rate of promotion relative to workers in full-time jobs. We are grateful to the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment for granting access to the data. The paper greatly benefited from comments by Daniel Hamermesh, Jonathan Wadsworth, and seminar participants at ZEW in Mannheim, at WPEG conference at York University and Tilburg University. We are also indebted to two anonymous referees for helpful suggestions that substantially improved the quality of the paper. The usual disclaimer applies.     

Global Outsourcing and Wage Inequality in Middle-Income Countries: Evidence from South Korea

A substantial number of studies have suggested that global outsourcing can induce wage inequality. As Feenstra and Hanson [(1996a) Foreign investment, outsourcing, and relative wage, in: R. C. Feestra, G. M. Hanson, and D. A. Irwin (Eds.) Political Economy of Trade Policy: Essays in Honor of Jagdish Bhagwati (Cambridge: The MIT Press), pp. 89–127] argued, global outsourcing is comparable to skill-biased technological change in that global outsourcing is more likely to increase the wage of skilled workers rather than their unskilled counterparts. We examine the effects of outsourcing on wage of skilled and unskilled workers in Korea's manufacturing sector with a focus on the dissimilar effects of outsourcing to developed countries (DCs) and less developed countries (LDCs) on relative wage. The results of system and difference GMM estimation based on manufacturing data from 1992 to 2006 indicate that outsourcing to DCs and LDCs have opposite (and significant) effects on relative wage, that is, outsourcing to DCs (LDCs) decreases the wage of skilled (unskilled) workers.     

二元结构下我国城镇劳动力市场中的性别工资差异研究

文章利用CHIP2002和CHIP2013数据,采用基于RIF无条件分位数回归的分解法,比较了不同时间维度和不同分位数水平上,我国农民工和城镇职工的性别工资差距及其形成机理。研究结果表明：第一,我国城镇劳动力市场中的性别工资差距不断扩大,其中农民工的性别工资差距全方位扩大,且低分位数上的增速最快,致使2013年其各分位数上的性别工资差距超过城镇职工。其中,低收入城镇职工与中等收入农民工群体的性别工资差距及其来源具有相似特征。第二,系数效应是造成城镇职工和农民工性别工资差异的主要因素,两个群体的性别歧视均有所增强。但与城镇职工相比,农民工群体的性别歧视较大且增速较快。由于低收入群体中性别歧视的快速增长,城镇劳动力市场中遭受性别歧视最严重的群体由2002年的高收入的城镇女性职工和高收入的女性农民工,转变为2013年中等收入的女性农民工和低收入的城镇女性职工。第三,尽管针对中高收入城镇女性职工的市场前歧视和市场歧视均有所弱化,但低收入的城镇女性人力资本水平及其回报率仍低于同类男性,呈现与女性农民工相似的特点。上述结果意味着,城镇劳动力市场中不同户籍、不同收入水平的女性,遭受着不同程度的性别歧视,应针对不同群体采用差别化的性别干预政策。     

Wage differentials between local and foreign workers in Macao: Discrimination?

This paper looks into the wage differential between local and foreign workers in Macao. We applied standard wage decomposition techniques to official wage statistics to identify wage gaps according to sector and occupation, among other dimensions. The results suggest that, in addition to wage discrimination against foreign workers as a whole, Macao’s employers tend to pay skilled foreign workers premium wages, whereas less-skilled foreign workers receive lower wages than their local counterparts.     

Role of Individual Social Capital in Wage Determination: Evidence from China

The present study examines the role of individual‐level social capital in workers’ wage determination in a Nash‐bargaining wage model using Chinese micro‐level data. The study finds a significant contribution of individual‐specific social capital to the wage level. In particular, larger individual social networks and workers’ positive attitudes toward social capital significantly increase the wage level. Moreover, the effect of social capital on the wage level is much larger for men than for women. The results indicate that construction of individual social capital could increase workers’ wages. However, efforts are needed to reduce the unequal contributions of social capital between men and women.     

Minimum Wages and Poverty: Will a $9.50 Federal Minimum Wage Really Help the Working Poor?

Using data drawn from the March Current Population Survey, we find that state and federal minimum wage increases between 2003 and 2007 had no effect on state poverty rates. When we then simulate the effects of a proposed federal minimum wage increase from $7.25 to $9.50 per hour, we find that such an increase will be even more poorly targeted to the working poor than was the last federal increase from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour. Assuming no negative employment effects, only 11.3% of workers who will gain live in poor households, compared to 15.8% from the last increase. When we allow for negative employment effects, we find that the working poor face a disproportionate share of the job losses. Our results suggest that raising the federal minimum wage continues to be an inadequate way to help the working poor.     

Full-Time and Part-Time Work and the Gender Wage Gap

Using hourly and weekly wages from the Canadian Labour Force Survey from 2000 until 2018, workers were separated into full-time and part-time and the following striking observation was documented. The overall gender wage gap is larger than either the full-time pay gap or the part-time pay gap, even after controlling for detailed personal and job characteristics. This result is a consequence of two findings: (i) part-time wages are lower than full-time wages, and (ii) the majority of part-time workers are women. In aggregation, this brings down the average female wage, leading to a larger aggregate gender wage gap. This was further linked to a differential selection by gender into full-time and part-time work, with women of higher earnings potential being overrepresented in the pool of part-time workers, resulting in no gender pay gap in the part-time worker category. Policies targeted at encouraging full-time employment for women should therefore reduce the gender wage gap.

     

最低工资制度对劳动力市场影响的实证分析

本文对最低工资理论模型进行了拓展分析,并以深圳为案例分析了最低工资制度对区域就业的影响。在跨区域劳动力流动的情况下,区域劳动力市场均衡工资趋近最低工资标准,并且不会导致区域就业量的下降。     

Export Activity,Firm Size and Wage Structure: Evidence from Taiwanese Manufacturing Firms*

This study adopts a semiparametric smooth coefficient model to evaluate the export–wage premiums, firm size–wage premiums, and the wage gap between skilled and unskilled labor. Particular focus is placed upon widespread evidence indicating that pay levels in ‘large’ and ‘export‐oriented’ firms are higher than in their ‘small’ and ‘domestic‐oriented’ counterparts. Applying the firm‐level data for Taiwanese manufacturing firms, we find a positive export–wage premium for skilled workers and a negative export–wage premium for unskilled workers. The hypothesis of a constant export premium across firm size is rejected. While most of the export–wage premiums for skilled labor can be attributed to the small and medium firms, the large exporting firms have a significant adverse effect on wages for unskilled labor. Moreover, our results suggest that the firm size–wage premiums for skilled workers are larger than those for unskilled workers. The wage gap between the two skill groups is also sensitive to size categories.     

The Effect of the Tipped Minimum Wage on Employees in the U.S. Restaurant Industry

According to federal law in 2013, employers can take a credit of up to $5.12 for tips received by workers in satisfying the minimum‐wage requirement of $7.25. This article uses interstate variation in laws regarding tip credits and minimum wages to identify the effects of reducing or eliminating the tip credit on employment, hours, and earnings in the U.S. restaurant industry. Using data from the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages and the Current Population Survey, we find that a reduction in the tip credit increases weekly earnings but reduces employment in the full‐service restaurant industry and for tipped workers. The results are robust to controls for spatial heterogeneity in employment trends and are supported by a series of falsification tests.     

Wage misalignment in CFA countries: were labour market policies to blame?

Wage rigidity, stemming from highly distortive labour marketpolicies, is a natural candidate to explain the overvaluationof the CFA franc after the adverse external shocks of the 1980s.This paper uses a variety of data sources to assess wage rigidityin CFA countries until the 1994 devaluation, and to analysewhether it was due to labour market policies. The paper showsthat wages were high in CFA countries, compared with both wagesin similar countries and the labour earnings of similar individualswithin the same countries. It also shows that wages were rigidin real terms, in the sense of following closely the fluctuationsof government wages and consumer prices, but it finds no evidenceof nominal wage rigidity, though. From an international perspective,minimum wages were not high enough to account for the observedwage misalignment. Moreover, their adjustment over time washighly responsive to real shocks. Private sector unions, inturn, seemed more instrumental in achieving wage moderationthan wage drift. Their members usually had lower wages thansimilar, non-unionised workers, which probably reflects the'subordinate' nature of the labour movement. The most likelycandidates to explain wage misalignment and real rigidity inCFA countries in the 1980s and early 1990s are therefore governmentpay policies and (possibly) limited competition in product markets.     

The Response of Hours of Work to Increases in the Minimum Wage

This paper examines the effect of minimum wage increases on the hours of work of teenagers (ages 16 to 19) using monthly data from the Current Population Survey. Our findings are consistent with the prediction from neoclassical theory that minimum wage increases have a negative effect on labor demand. However, the estimates we provide here for the elasticity of hours of teen labor demanded with respect to the minimum wage suggest that alternative estimates based on aggregate employment consistently understate the total impact of minimum wage increases on teenage labor utilization.