The short-run employment effects of the German minimum wage reform
- We assess the short-term employment effects of the introduction of a national statutory minimum wage in Germany in 2015. For this purpose, we exploit variation in the regional treatment intensity, assuming that the stronger a minimum wage ‘bites’ into the regional wage distribution, the stronger the regional labour market will be affected. In contrast to previous studies, we construct two regional bite indicators based upon detailed individual wage data from the Structure of Earnings Survey (SES) 2014 and combine it with administrative information on regional employment. Moreover, using the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we are able to affirm the absence of anticipation effects and verify the assumption of a common trend in wages before the reform. In sum, we find only moderate negative effects on overall employment of about 140,000 (0.4%) jobs, which are mainly driven by a sharp decline of marginal employment (‘mini-jobs’), while we do not find pronounced significant effects for regular employment in most specifications. Our resultsWe assess the short-term employment effects of the introduction of a national statutory minimum wage in Germany in 2015. For this purpose, we exploit variation in the regional treatment intensity, assuming that the stronger a minimum wage ‘bites’ into the regional wage distribution, the stronger the regional labour market will be affected. In contrast to previous studies, we construct two regional bite indicators based upon detailed individual wage data from the Structure of Earnings Survey (SES) 2014 and combine it with administrative information on regional employment. Moreover, using the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we are able to affirm the absence of anticipation effects and verify the assumption of a common trend in wages before the reform. In sum, we find only moderate negative effects on overall employment of about 140,000 (0.4%) jobs, which are mainly driven by a sharp decline of marginal employment (‘mini-jobs’), while we do not find pronounced significant effects for regular employment in most specifications. Our results are robust to a variety of sensitivity tests.…
Author details: | Marco CaliendoORCiDGND, Alexandra Fedorets, Malte PreussGND, Carsten SchröderORCiDGND, Linda WittbrodtORCiDGND |
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DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2018.07.002 |
ISSN: | 0927-5371 |
ISSN: | 1879-1034 |
Title of parent work (English): | Labour economics : an international journal |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Place of publishing: | Amsterdam |
Publication type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Year of first publication: | 2018 |
Publication year: | 2018 |
Release date: | 2021/10/20 |
Tag: | Employment effects; Minimum wage; Regional bite |
Volume: | 53 |
Number of pages: | 17 |
First page: | 46 |
Last Page: | 62 |
Funding institution: | Wage Introduction in Germany (EVA-MIN) - Innovative Knowledge Transfer |
Organizational units: | Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Wirtschaftswissenschaften / Fachgruppe Betriebswirtschaftslehre |
DDC classification: | 3 Sozialwissenschaften / 33 Wirtschaft / 330 Wirtschaft |