TY  - JOUR
AU  - Freeman,Richard B.
AU  - Schettkat,Ronald
TI  - Low Wage Services: Interpreting the US - German Difference
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 7611
PY  - 2000
Y2  - March 2000
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7611
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w7611.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Richard B. Freeman
NBER
1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA  02138
Tel: 617/868-3900
Fax: 617/868-2742
E-Mail: freeman@nber.org
AB  - Is the expansion of jobs in low-wage services in Europe restricted by high wages? With services now the main sector source of employment growth this question becomes crucial and we examine it through a detailed comparison of the role of low-wage services in the US and Germany. We find a clear low-wage service jobs deficit' in Germany but this is not due to excessively high German wages. Relative wages in low-wage sectors are extremely similar in the two countries. This is a striking finding given the much wider wage distribution in the US. The explanation for this phenomenon is the much greater intra-industry wage dispersion in the US producing similar industry mean wages as the much narrower German distribution.
ER  -