Structure of the labour market and wage inequality: evidence from European countries

The aim of this paper is to explore how the structural changes that have occurred in the labour market, in terms of employment composition by skill levels, affect wage inequality in three developed countries of Western Europe that are in close geographical proximity but have disparities in their labour market characteristics. More precisely, the analysis compares, from an international perspective, France, Germany—whose labour markets have been characterised in recent years by job polarization and the upgrading of occupations, respectively—and Italy, where neither of the two phenomena can be clearly identified. Using EU-SILC (European Union—Survey on Income and Living Conditions) data, in the first step, RIF-regression (Recentered Influence Function) enables an exploration on the primary factors that are likely to explain the differences in generating personal labour earnings and, in the second step, a decomposition of the change in wage inequality between 2005 and 2013 to evaluate how much of the overall gap is accounted for by the endowments in employees’ individual characteristics (composition effect) rather than the capability of labour markets to transform these characteristics into job opportunities and earnings (wage structure). Regarding France and Germany, the main results highlight how the endowment effect plays a key role in decreasing or, at least, not increasing wage inequality, whereas in Italy the rising inequality may be due to the lower efficiency of the country’s labour market in creating job opportunities, better job-related careers, and higher-salaries for employees.