Gender Wage Differentials in the Finnish Labour Market

Abstract

A comprehensive analysis of the gender wage differential among Finnish full time employees is reported. Oaxaca decompositions show that the the overall wage gap of about 21.5 per cent cannot be accounted for by individual characteristics, since age and educational qualifications are rather similar for men and women. When industry and occupational qualifications are included in the regressor matrix, the unexplained part shrinks to about 50 per cent of the gross differential. An even larger part of the gross differential can be explained in sector-specific analyses with a dense set of occupational dummies. In a less standard part of the analysis, we characterise the distribution of the unexplained wage gap across the variable space. It turns out the women with a high wage predictor, that is, women with good educational qualifications in well-remunerated occupations, drag the most behind their male colleagues endowed with similar characteristics.

• ISSN: 1457-2923
• ISBN: 952-5071-67-7
• JEL: J31, J70, J71
• Publication in PDF-format