Glass Ceilings or Glass Doors? Wage Disparity within and between Firms

30 Pages Posted: 15 Dec 2009

See all articles by Krishna Pendakur

Krishna Pendakur

Simon Fraser University (SFU) - Department of Economics

Simon D. Woodcock

Simon Fraser University; Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

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Abstract

We investigate whether immigrant and minority workers' poor access to high-wage jobs - that is, glass ceilings - is attributable to poor access to jobs in high-wage firms, a phenomenon we call glass doors. Our analysis uses linked employer-employee data to measure mean- and quantile-wage differentials of immigrants and ethnic minorities, both within and across firms. We find that glass ceilings exist for some immigrant groups, and that they are driven in large measure by glass doors. For some immigrant groups, the sorting of these workers across firms accounts for as much as half of the economy-wide wage disparity they face.

Keywords: glass ceilings, wage differentials, immigration, visible minorities, quantile regression, linked employer-employee data

JEL Classification: J15, J71, J31

Suggested Citation

Pendakur, Krishna and Woodcock, Simon D., Glass Ceilings or Glass Doors? Wage Disparity within and between Firms. IZA Discussion Paper No. 4626, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1522694 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1522694

Krishna Pendakur (Contact Author)

Simon Fraser University (SFU) - Department of Economics ( email )

8888 University Drive
Burnaby, British Columbia V5A 1S6
Canada

Simon D. Woodcock

Simon Fraser University ( email )

Dept. of Economics
8888 University Drive
Burnaby, British Columbia V5A 1S6
Canada

HOME PAGE: http://www.sfu.ca/~swoodcoc

Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) ( email )

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

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