Glass Ceilings or Glass Doors? Wage Disparity Within and Between Firms

Krishna Pendakur and Simon Woodcock

Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University

Abstract: We investigate whether immigrant and minority workers' poor access to high-wage jobs---that is, glass ceilings---is attributable to poor access to jobs in high-wage firms, a phenomenon we call glass doors. Our analysis uses linked employer-employee data to measure mean- and quantile-wage differentials of immigrants and ethnic minorities, both within and across firms. We find that glass ceilings exist for some immigrant groups, and that they are driven in large measure by glass doors. For some immigrant groups, the sorting of these workers across firms accounts for as much as half of the economy-wide wage disparity they face.

Keywords: glass ceilings; wage differentials; immigration; visible minorities; quantile regression; linked employer-employee data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J31 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 19
Date: 2008-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-mig
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Glass Ceilings or Glass Doors? Wage Disparity Within and Between Firms (2010)
Working Paper: Glass Ceilings or Glass Doors? Wage Disparity Within and Between Firms (2009)
Working Paper: Glass Ceilings or Glass Doors? Wage Disparity Within and Between Firms (2009)
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