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

work hours do not exceed 35 hours. Again, we observe a clear difference
between the two sub-populations in all countries. In particular, the group of
minimum earners stands out as containing:
— a considerably higher share of employees with temporary work contracts;
— a higher share of part time employment than the sub-population with
higher wages.
In light of cross-country variations in terms of the average age, education,
contract type etc among the countries in our sample, it is not straightforward
to assess the overall relationship between a particular individual or job
characteristic and the probability of being paid at the minimum wage. One
way to compute such probabilities is to estimate a logistic model in which the
likelihood of being paid the minimum wage is explained with the set variables
shown in Table 4. This procedure allows to gauge the effect of each of the
variables as a conditional probability while holding the other variables
constant. The results of a logistic regression are presented in Section 3.3.
Table 4 Individual characteristics of employees below and above minimum wages (2007)
Individual
wage
Educational
attainment
TYPE I COUNTRIES
Bulgaria
Hungary
Ireland
Poland
Romania
Spain
United
Kingdom
TYPE II COUNTRIES
Belgium
Germany
MW
40.8
(11.7)
40.2
(10.8)
39.8
(12.5)
39.5
(11.1)
39.4
(10.1)
39.5
(10.7)
41.4
(12.1)
41.0
(10.1)
43.0
(10.6)
MW
46.4
(49.9)
46.8
(50.0)
49.9
(50.0)
46.4
(49.9)
42.7
(49.5)
43.4
(50.0)
50.4
(50.0)
52.1
(50.0)
44.9
(49.7)
1
41.4
30.6
35.6
15.2
30.6
55.5
23.5
29.1
21.7
2
54.2
66.9
52.3
77.6
66.3
20.7
61.8
41.5
68.3
Who earns minimum wages in Europe ?
Distribution of employees according to
educational attainment (ISCED)
MW
Notes
1 MW are the (differentiated) national minimum wages in Type I countries and sector minimum wages in Type II countries
2 Standard errors are in parenthesis
3
4.4
2.6
12.2
7.2
3.1
23.8
14.7
29.4
10.1
1
15.1
11.4
22.5
5.7
10.6
35.9
9.4
16.8
9.0
2
62.3
64.1
36.5
66.9
69.1
25.1
54.4
38.4
56.1
Report 124
3
22.6
24.5
41.0
27.4
20.3
39.0
36.2
44.8
34.9
37