Economics Seminar: Minimum Wages in the UK, and the Relative Wages and Productivity of Young Workers

When?

Wednesday 7 December 2011, 16:00 to 17:00

Where?

04AD00

Open to:

Staff, Public, Students

Speaker:

Prof. Andy Dickerson

Prof. Andy Dickerson (Sheffield) will present

"Minimum Wages in the UK, and the Relative Wages and Productivity of Young Workers" (with Steven McIntosh)

Abstract

This paper utilises sectoral level data for the UK for 1996-2007 in order to estimate age-earnings and age-productivity profiles. The aim of the paper is to investigate how these profiles have changed following the introduction and subsequent uprating of the National Minimum Wage in the UK.  The focus is on young workers in particular whose relative wages may have been more affected by the minimum wage, given that younger people are, in general, lower paid.  Changes in their age-earnings profile could in turn open up or exacerbate gaps between relative wages and relative productivity levels, as compared to older workers.  The results, however, reveal that the UK National Minimum Wage has not altered the slope of the age-earnings profile, whilst productivity differences between young and old workers have, if anything, contracted over the sample period.