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Review article: Low-wage work in high-income countries: Labor-market institutions and business strategy in the US and Europe

¹ School of Management and Labor Relations, Rutgers University, USA
² Center for Economic and Policy Research, Washington, DC

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: eappelba{at}rci.rutgers.edu.

	Abstract

This article provides an overview of low-wage occupations in five industries (nursing assistants and cleaners in hospitals, cashiers and stock/sales clerks in food and electronics retail trade, process operatives in meat processing and confectionary, housekeepers in hotels, and in-coming sales/service operators in call centers) in six countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Netherlands, United Kingdom, and the United States), based on a large-scale, multi-year research project funded and coordinated by the Russell Sage Foundation in New York. Low-wage work varies substantially both across and within countries, with large increases in the 1980s and 1990s in the Netherlands and the UK and, since the mid-1990s, in Germany. The US has the highest incidence of low-wage work, with Germany close behind. Denmark and France have much less low-wage work. Institutions (and their deterioration) play a large role in explaining these and other differences.

First published on October 29, 2009, doi:10.1177/0018726709349200

Human Relations 2009;62:1907.

A more recent version of this article appeared on December 1, 2009


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