Who earns minimum wages in Europe - European Trade Union ...

François Rycx and Stephan Kampelmann
Figure 4 Wage distribution and minima in Germany (2007)
0 2 4 6 8
percent
0 10 20 30 40 50
gross hourly wage (euros)
Source: SOEP; current 2007 euros; thin vertical lines represent levels of minima (differentiated by sector and region).
3.2.2 Individual and job characteristics of minimum wage
earners
So far we presented information on the size of the employment spike around
wage minima in general. We now turn to the composition of the population of
minimum wage earners. This will be done by comparing them to the rest of
the labour force with respect to a range of socio-demographic and job
characteristics.
Table 4 contains information on individual characteristics, namely on age,
sex, and educational attainment. Although there is some diversity among the
different countries, in all of them the population of minimum wage earners is
similar in that it is characterised by:
— a lower average age;
— on average more female employment;
— lower levels of educational attainment than workers with higher wages.
Table 4 also shows the standard deviation associated with the average age and
proportion of female workers that allow to compute whether the observed
differences between the two sub-populations are statistically significant in the
different countries of our sample.
As for the job characteristics, Table 5 compares the two sub-populations with
respect to the share of temporary work contracts and the incidence of part
time jobs. The latter has been defined as employments whose average weekly
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Germany (2007)