Low-wage work in five European countries and the United States

Abstract

Analysing research findings on Denmark, Germany, France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States, the author shows that the incidenceand conditions of low-paid employment in each country are determined by a set of institutions, including minimum wage and active labour market policies, tax and social security systems, and collective bargaining. The widely assumed trade-off between employment and wages, he argues, is not inescapable: active labour market policies for individual empowerment and institutions imposing "beneficial constraints" can prevent improved conditions at the bottom of the earnings distribution from translating into higher unemployment, while also helping to narrow inequalities.