National Wage Setting

89 Pages Posted: 10 Nov 2022

See all articles by Jonathon Hazell

Jonathon Hazell

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Christina Patterson

University of Chicago

Heather Sarsons

University of Chicago; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

Bledi Taska

Emsi Burning Glass

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Date Written: November 9, 2022

Abstract

How do firms set wages across space? Using job-level vacancy data and a survey of HR managers, we show that 40-50% of a job’s posted wages are identical across locations within a firm. Moreover, nominal posted wages within the firm vary relatively little with local prices, a pattern we verify with other measures of job level wages. Using the co-movement of wage growth across establishments, we argue these patterns reflect national wage setting---a significant minority of firms choose to set the same nominal wage for a job across all their establishments, despite varying local labor market conditions.

JEL Classification: J3,J31

Suggested Citation

Hazell, Jonathon and Patterson, Christina and Sarsons, Heather and Taska, Bledi, National Wage Setting (November 9, 2022). University of Chicago, Becker Friedman Institute for Economics Working Paper No. 2022-150, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4273117 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4273117

Jonathon Hazell

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) ( email )

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Christina Patterson (Contact Author)

University of Chicago ( email )

Heather Sarsons

University of Chicago ( email )

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Chicago, IL 60637
United States

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
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Bledi Taska

Emsi Burning Glass ( email )

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Boston, MA 02110

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