Workplace Wage Inequality in the Netherlands: Gender, Education, and Flexibility

How did workplace wage inequalities change following the Great Recession? Do trends in wage differences within workplaces explain the recent increase in the gap between high and low earners? And how do these trends differ by gender, education, and contract type? This paper investigates these questions in the Netherlands between the period 1999 and 2013 by decomposing total wage inequality to within and between workplace components. I analyze hourly wages from tax registers of the complete population of Dutch employees which are linked to data on employers and workplaces provided by the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics. Labor flexibility (temporary and part-time work) are increasing within workplaces in the Netherlands and other developed economies, and there are arguments that this process may partially drive the increase in workplace inequality. Both forms of flexible work contracts are, however, concentrated among female and lower educated workers who have traditionally lower workplace bargaining power compared to male and higher educated co-workers. To approach a better understanding of the mechanisms generating workplace wage inequality, I present further decompositions of within and between workplace inequality by gender, education and contract type.