La Meglio Gioventù: Earnings Gaps across Generations and Skills in Italy

This paper documents the evolution of the experience-earnings profiles of employees in the Italian private sector over the first 6 years of working career across three birth cohorts (1965–1969, 1970–1974, 1975–1979). We explore the average trends and disentangle how the patterns vary according to individual skills, defined in terms of educational levels and of percentiles of the unconditional earnings distribution. The original contribution of this paper consists in providing evidence that the ‘‘best’’ workers of the most recent cohorts (the high-skilled) have suffered, compared to previous cohorts, an earnings penalty much more severe than that experienced by unskilled workers.