Public Sector Labour Market: an Empirical Analysis in Six Selected European Countries

The thesis aims to draw a comparative picture of some basic features of the public sector labour market in six important and representative European economies (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, UK). Particular attention is drawn upon the current state of earning gaps (public vs. private; female vs. male). Relying upon Eurostat data from the 2006 and 2010 Structure of Earnings Survey , the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition was applied to various subsets of the workforce. Issues of comparability are emphasized, by poising civil servants against their appropriate counterpart: employees from large private firms, by considering jobs and professional figures within the same sectors (basically NACE’s P (Education), Q (Human health and social work activities), and local utilities), and by considering workers characterized by similar levels of education. Finally, the analysis extends to monthly earnings (going beyond the usually considered hourly earnings). We find a public wage premium for monthly earnings only in UK and Spain, while the usual positive public wage premium is found with hourly earnings also in Italy. Generally, less educated employees working in the public sector fare better (in terms of premium) than their more educated colleagues. As for gender pay discrimination, it exists (against females) both in the public and the private sector, with female civil servants being less discriminated than their private counterparts in Italy, Germany and Spain.