IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/29920.html

Industries, Mega Firms, and Increasing Inequality

Author

Listed:
  • John C. Haltiwanger
  • Henry R. Hyatt
  • James Spletzer

Abstract

Most of the rise in overall earnings inequality is accounted for by rising between-industry dispersion from ten percent of 4-digit NAICS industries. These thirty industries are clustered especially in high-paying high-tech and low-paying retail sectors. The rise of employment in mega firms is concentrated in the industries that dominate rising earnings inequality. Earnings differentials for the mega firms relative to small firms decline in the low-paying industries but increase in the high-paying industries. A critical component accounting for the rising dispersion in the top thirty industries is an increasing covariance between industry premia and worker characteristics associated with high earnings.

Suggested Citation

  • John C. Haltiwanger & Henry R. Hyatt & James Spletzer, 2022. "Industries, Mega Firms, and Increasing Inequality," NBER Working Papers 29920, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:29920
    Note: EFG LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w29920.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Agnes Norris Keiller & Tim Obermeier & Andreas Teichgraeber & John Van Reenen, 2024. "An Engine of (Pay) Growth? Productivity and Wages in the UK Auto Industry," NBER Working Papers 32695, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Torrent-Sellens, Joan, 2024. "Digital transition, data-and-tasks crowd-based economy, and the shared social progress: Unveiling a new political economy from a European perspective," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    3. Holmberg, Johan & Simmons, Michael & Trapeznikova, Ija, 2024. "Parental Wealth and Early Labor Market Outcomes," Umeå Economic Studies 1029, Umeå University, Department of Economics.
    4. Jose Garcia-Louzao & Alessandro Ruggieri, 2023. "Labor Market Competition and Inequality," Bank of Lithuania Working Paper Series 117, Bank of Lithuania.
    5. David Card & Jesse Rothstein & Moises Yi, 2024. "Industry Wage Differentials: A Firm-Based Approach," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 42(S1), pages 11-59.
    6. Hervé, Justine, 2023. "Specialists or generalists? Cross-industry mobility and wages," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    7. Hu, Ruiyang & Wang, Jian & Yang, Yibai & Zheng, Zhijie, 2024. "Inflation and income inequality in an open-economy growth model with liquidity constraints on R&D," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    8. Pawe{l} Gola & Yuejun Zhao, 2024. "A Firm Link: Overall, Between- and Within-Firm Inequality Through the Lens of a Sorting Model," Papers 2410.11532, arXiv.org.
    9. Doerr, Sebastian & Drechsel, Thomas & Lee, Donggyu, 2022. "Income Inequality and Job Creation," CEPR Discussion Papers 17342, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Trouvain, Florian, 2024. "Technology Adoption, Innovation, and Inequality in a Global World," VfS Annual Conference 2024 (Berlin): Upcoming Labor Market Challenges 302377, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    11. Gordon H. Hanson & Enrico Moretti, 2025. "Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone? Changes in the Geography of Work in the US, 1980-2021," NBER Working Papers 33631, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:29920. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.