Conceptualizing Job and Employment Concepts for Earnings Inequality Estimands With Linked Employer-Employee Data1

We examine variations in pay gap estimates and inferences associated with distinct conceptualizations of jobs and employment contexts under legal and comparable worth theories of pay bias. We find that job titles produce smaller estimates of within job pay gaps than job groups, but the inferential importance of job concepts differs across organizational, workplace, and job groups within workplace units of observation. Moving from more to less job concept detail, we find almost no inference differences when pay gaps are estimated at the organizational level. Tradeoffs at the workplace and job groups within workplace levels are more common, comprising around 10 percent to 20 percent of observations. A legal theoretical framework leads to fewer empirical estimates of significant pay disparities, while comparable worth estimates suggest higher levels of gender and racial bias at the job and workplace levels. This research has implications for future analyses of linked employer-employee data and for both scientific research and regulatory enforcement of equal opportunity law.