Workplaces have become more unstable in recent decades, but how such instability shapes categorical inequalities remains little understood. This study explores how the rise of employment precarity, re-conceptualized as an attribute of workplaces, affects gender inequality. We argue that gender inequality increases in volatile workplaces where employee tenure is short and turnover is common. In such workplaces, gender stereotyping and opportunity hoarding by men may become prevalent, because members have little incentive to acquire individualized information about each other and those who are not satisfied with unequal distribution of rewards simply leave rather than raising their voice. To test our argument, we analyze the effect of workplace volatility on the gender-wage gap, using employer–employee linked data from two separate national contexts: South Korea and the Netherlands. Leveraging on the different institutional contexts of the two countries, we also examine the moderating roles of unionization and public sector employment. Our theory and empirical findings contribute to our understanding of the workplace-level mechanisms of inequality, especially in the context of recent structural changes in the labor market.

Using a unique sample of 5,022 workers in 94 large German workplaces, the authors explore whether and how women’s access to higher level positions, firms’ human resources practices, and workers’ qualification levels are associated with gender differences in earnings. First, they find that having more women in management reduces the gender earnings gap for jobs with low qualifications, but not those with high qualifications. Second, they find that while men’s compensation is positively affected by having a male supervisor, women with a female supervisor do not receive such an advantage. Finally, they find that human resources practices and job-level qualifications moderate the association between gendered power and gender earnings inequalities. Integrating women into managerial and supervisory roles does not automatically reduce gender inequalities; its impacts are contingent on organizational context.

What makes contacts at hiring organizations valuable for job seekers? Network-structural research emphasizes the importance of open networks for transmitting job leads, but studies of organizational networks show that closure helps employees influence decision-makers and increases group identification. We test the benefits of open and closed workplace networks for job seekers using administrative data on 72,173 hires in Denmark. Using networks of ex-coworker ties and job moves matched to plausible alternatives, we assess the utility of contacts’ workplace networks for hiring. Closure in the workplace networks of job seekers’ contacts increases the probability that job seekers will join contacts’ organizations by 51%. We go on to test three potential mechanisms. Closure helps contacts influence managers, who will in most cases have hiring authority, and integrates job seekers and their contacts into their workplace. We find no evidence that closed networks facilitate hiring by conveying complex information to employers and candidates.

The authors propose a strategy for observing and explaining workplace variance in categorically linked inequalities. Using Swedish economy-wide linked employer-employee panel data, the authors examine variation in workplace wage inequalities between native Swedes and non-Western immigrants. Consistent with relational inequality theory, the authors’ findings are that immigrant-native wage gaps vary dramatically across workplaces, even net of strong human capital controls. The authors also find that, net of observed and fixed-effect controls for individual traits, workplace immigrant-native wage gaps decline with increased workplace immigrant employment and managerial representation and increase when job segregation rises. These results are stronger in high-inequality workplaces and for white-collar employees: contexts in which one expects status-based claims on organizational resources, the central causal mechanism identified by relational inequality theory, to be stronger. The authors conclude that workplace variation in the non-Western immigrant-native wage gaps is contingent on organizational variation in the relative power of groups and the institutional context in which that power is exercised.

This is a three paper dissertation examining between-workplace and between-industry income inequality and their relations with changing labor market institutions and economic structures since roughly the early the 1990s. All three papers use large scale administrative linked employer-employee panel data (LEEP) for multiple years (roughly, 1993-2013) for a set of countries that span North America, Western and Eastern Europe, and East Asia. In the first chapter, I examine country differences in levels of between-workplace income inequality. Countries strongly vary in levels of between-workplace inequality. On the high end for example, over 60% of Germany’s income inequality occurs between workplaces. On the lower end, less than 30% of the Netherland’s income inequality occurs between workplaces. I use fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis to identify institutional configurations that lead to high levels of between-workplace inequality. Ultimately, I find three distinct configurations, and that all three configurations are mainly composed of items related to labor union dynamics such as between-union conflicts, collective bargaining coverage, or union membership concentration. The second paper looks at trends in between-workplace inequality rather than levels. Recent evidence has shown that rising between-workplace inequality has become the dominant driver of rising income inequality, but less is known about the specific processes that have facilitated rising between-workplace inequality. I examine how labor union dynamics (e.g. declining union density), employment institutions (e.g. legal regulations around permanent and temporary work contracts), and economic structure (e.g. rising rates of globalization and the decline of the manufacturing sector) have impacted trends in between-workplace inequality. I find that many of these items significantly impact both between-workplace and within-workplace inequality, but that their effects tend to be stronger on between-workplace inequality. Finally, the last paper examines industry-level trends in low-wage work since the early 1990s for a set of European countries. Low-wage work has become increasingly important to study as income inequality has risen across much of Europe. Many European nations have likewise undergone significant shifts in their labor market institutions. Using earnings data from administrative sources, industry-level trends in the concentration of low-wage work since the mid-1990s are examined for six European countries (Denmark, Sweden, France, Germany, Czechia, and Slovenia). Previous studies found that low-wage jobs were less common in core industries such as manufacturing and plentiful in service sector industries such as retail. These early findings are broadly confirmed here, but significant industry-level variation in levels and trends in low-wage work are found across these countries. Industry-level trends in low-wage work are related to industry-specific industrial relations.

Organizational research has revealed considerable variation in immigrant–native pay inequalities across workplace contexts. However, less is known about how broader labor market institutions intersect in the local dynamics of wage setting between employees of immigrant and native backgrounds. We argue that union density and higher shares of employees in licensed occupations in workplaces constrain organizational opportunity structures for unequal pay according to immigrant backgrounds. Our analysis of longitudinal linked employer–employee administrative data for the Norwegian labor market shows that the wage gap between immigrants and natives decreases with increasing workplace unionization, but almost exclusively for immigrants who are union members. Next, licensure raises pay at the individual and workplace levels, although any reduction in immigrant–native pay gaps is contingent on immigrants’ access to licensed jobs. Our findings support the claim that institutional regulation in the workplace reduces the organizational scope of unequal pay based on immigrant status.

Germany has experienced sharply rising earnings inequalities, both between and within workplaces. Working from prior literature on rising employment dualization and the fissuring of workplaces into high and low wage employers, we explore a set of organizational explanations for rising between and within workplace inequality focusing on the role of employment dualization, skill segregation/complexity, and firm fissuring. We describe and model these hypothesized processes with administrative data on a large random sample panel of German workplaces. We find that rising inequalities are associated with polarization in industrial wage rates and the birth of new low wage workplaces, as well as increased establishment skill specialization and the growth of part-time jobs in workplace divisions of labor. We conclude with recommendations for future research that directly examines more proximate mechanisms and their relative importance in different institutional contexts.

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