Earnings gaps in the workplace are an under-researched topic in the social sciences. However, workplaces have undergone profound changes in recent decades, which also affect the extent of earnings differences between workers in the same work organisation. An analysis of linked data on employers and workers in 12 countries - Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, South Korea and Sweden - shows that everywhere there is a growing isolation of better paid workers from other workers. There is also a dramatic reduction in contact between the best paid workers and the lowest ones. 

The authors of the study The Great Separation: Top Earner Segregation at Work in Advanced Capitalist Economies, including Prof. Dr. Aleksandra Kanjuo-Mrčela from the Centre for Organisational and Human Resources Research, analyse the factors that lead to a growing divide between better and lower paid workers. Among the factors are: de-industrialisation, downsizing of work organisations, restructuring (including redundancies, outsourcing, offshoring) and digitalisation. The findings of the analysis raise questions about how organisational practices and changes at workplace level contribute to inequalities and stimulate future research on the causes and consequences of pay segregation.

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The survey directly follows Sustainable Development Goal 8 (SDG 8): decent work and economic growth, as it focuses on inequalities in the workplace, in particular with regard to pay segregation.

Photo: Canva