Relative Supply and Demand for Skills in Switzerland

Patrick Puhani

Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), 2005, vol. 141, issue IV, 555-584

Abstract: Whereas Anglo-Saxon economies have recently experienced a widening wage distribution between skill groups, the Swiss wage structure has remained almost stable. This raises the question whether the Swiss labour market did not experience a decrease in the relative demand for low-skilled workers as the Anglo-Saxon economies or whether it was supply changes that kept the wage distribution between skill groups constant. I show that immigration policy played a negligible role and that the stable wage structure was made possible by adequate increases in the relative supply of skills that neutralised the increasing relative demand. From a policy perspective, my results are supportive of existing supply-side policies aiming to improve the skills of the workforce, like the expansion of higher education.

Keywords: wages; earnings; non-employment; rigidity; immigrants; work permits (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E24 J21 J31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sjes.ch/papers/2005-IV-3.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ses:arsjes:2005-iv-3

Access Statistics for this article

Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES) is currently edited by Marius Brülhart

More articles in Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES) from Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kurt Schmidheiny ().