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Earnings of Public Sector and Private Sector Employees in Australia: Is There a Difference? *
Author(s) -
BORLAND JEFF,
HIRSCHBERG JOE,
LYE JENNY
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
economic record
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.365
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1475-4932
pISSN - 0013-0249
DOI - 10.1111/j.1475-4932.1998.tb01902.x
Subject(s) - public sector , earnings , private sector , productivity , labour economics , business , primary sector of the economy , significant difference , demographic economics , economics , economic sector , accounting , economic growth , economy , mathematics , statistics
This study examines differences in average weekly earnings between public sector and private sector employees in Australia. In the 1990s average weekly earnings of full‐time public sector employees were higher than for full‐time private sector employees by 10 to 15 per cent for males and 20 to 25 per cent for females. A variety of decomposition tests are applied to examine the sources of this inter‐sector difference in average weekly earnings. The tests generally show that higher average weekly earnings of public sector employees are wholly explained by inter‐sector differences in productivity‐related characteristics of employees and job characteristics in each sector.