The worsening of wage expectations in Italy: a study based on administrative data

This paper builds on existing studies on the relationship between individual wages, age and experience, and provides new evidence on the determinants of wages in Italy. Using a large panel of individual administrative data, it shows that wage to age profiles for different cohorts of workers are not stable over time: although younger generations of Italian workers are benefiting from higher starting wages than older generations, they face the prospect of lower growth of future earnings. It also confirms the existence of a significant supply effect: the bigger the cohort relative to the active population, the smaller the cohort’s gain in terms of wage levels. Finally, it captures the dependence of individual wages on aggregate labour market conditions: individual wages are shown to be negatively related to the rate of unemployment and positively related to the union wage index.