IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/faulre/125.html

Is there a union wage premium in Germany and which workers benefit most?

Author

Listed:
  • Bonaccolto-Töpfer, Marina
  • Schnabel, Claus

Abstract

Using representative data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), this paper finds a statistically significant union wage premium in Germany of almost three percent which is not simply a collective bargaining premium. Given that the union membership fee is typically about one percent of workers' gross wages, this finding suggests that it pays off to be a union member. Our results show that the wage premium differs substantially between various occupations and educational groups, but not between men and women. We do not find that union wage premia are higher for those occupations and workers which constitute the core of union membership. Rather, unions seem to care about disadvantaged workers and pursue a wider social agenda.

Suggested Citation

  • Bonaccolto-Töpfer, Marina & Schnabel, Claus, 2023. "Is there a union wage premium in Germany and which workers benefit most?," Discussion Papers 125, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Chair of Labour and Regional Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:faulre:125
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/268678/1/1832694801.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. Rieder, André & Schnabel, Claus, 2025. "Beyond Collective Agreements: The Rise of the Wage Cushion in Germany," IZA Discussion Papers 18153, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Adrian Chadi & Laszlo Goerke, 2023. "Seeking shelter in times of crisis? unemployment, perceived job insecurity and trade union membership," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 90(359), pages 1041-1088, July.
    3. Theresa Geißler & Laszlo Goerke, 2023. "Educational Mismatch and Labour Market Institutions: The Role of Gender," Working Papers 2023.14, International Network for Economic Research - INFER.
    4. Brändle, Tobias, 2024. "Unions and Collective Bargaining: The Influence on Wages, Employment and Firm Survival," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1457, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    5. Claus Schnabel, 2025. "Unions and employers’ associations in Germany: a survey of their membership, density and bargaining coverage," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 59(1), pages 1-16, December.
    6. Marco Clemens & Laszlo Goerke, 2025. "Trade Union Membership and Bonus Payments: German Survey Evidence," IAAEU Discussion Papers 202503, Institute of Labour Law and Industrial Relations in the European Union (IAAEU).
    7. Björn Becker & Laszlo Goerke & Yue Huang, 2024. "Trade Union Membership and Life Satisfaction," IAAEU Discussion Papers 202408, Institute of Labour Law and Industrial Relations in the European Union (IAAEU).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
    • J53 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Labor-Management Relations; Industrial Jurisprudence

    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:zbw:faulre:125. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vierlde.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.