Understanding occupational wage growth

Adrian Adermon, Simon Ek, Georg Graetz and Yaroslav Yakymovych

No 26161, RFBerlin Discussion Paper Series from ROCKWOOL Foundation Berlin (RFBerlin)

Abstract: We jointly estimate growth in occupational wage premia as well as time-varying occupation-specific life-cycle profiles for Swedish workers 1996-2013. Our novel identification strategy is based on re-centering of life-cycle profiles around their flat spot. We document a substantial increase in between-occupation wage inequality due to differential growth in premia, and show that changes in worker composition partly counteracted this trend. The association of wage premium growth and employment growth is positive, suggesting that premium growth is predominantly driven by demand-side factors. We also find that wage growth due to occupation-specific skill acquisition was more dispersed in the early years of the sample period. Our results are robust to varying the assumed flat spot over a reasonable range, as well as to allowing for occupation-level changes in returns to cognitive and psycho-social skills. The results suggest that Swedish wage setting institutions have not prevented wages and quantities from adjusting to technological change or consumer demand shifts.

Keywords: Wage Growth; Inequality; Occupational Mobility (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 J24 J31 J62 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-06
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.rfberlin.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/26161.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:crm:wpaper:26161

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in RFBerlin Discussion Paper Series from ROCKWOOL Foundation Berlin (RFBerlin) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Moritz Lubczyk () and Matthew Nibloe ().