Does skill shortage pay off for nursing staff in Germany? Wage premiums for hiring problems, industrial relations, and profitability.

Kölling, Arnd (2023): Does skill shortage pay off for nursing staff in Germany? Wage premiums for hiring problems, industrial relations, and profitability.

Abstract

This study investigates the impact of hiring problems, industrial relations at the workplace and profitability on compensation and wage premia for nursing staff in Germany. Based on Mincer-type earnings functions and a large linked-employee dataset, regressions with unobserved individual and firm-specific fixed effects are estimated. The econometric analysis shows that firms with staffing problems pay a wage premium of about 4 to 5% for nurses. However, this only holds for firms that do not have a works council and/or are not profitable. Here, the wage premium for staffing is paid at the expense of previous premiums for co-determination at the workplace or rent sharing. These premiums are significantly reduced or eliminated due to better outside options. Overall, the pay increases for nurses in firms with staffing problems. Nevertheless, this does not apply to all skilled workers in Germany.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: Shortage of skilled labor; works councils; wage premium; nurses
• Subjects: J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J2 - Demand and Supply of Labor > J23 - Labor Demand; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J2 - Demand and Supply of Labor > J24 - Human Capital ; Skills ; Occupational Choice ; Labor Productivity; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J5 - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining > J52 - Dispute Resolution: Strikes, Arbitration, and Mediation ; Collective Bargaining; J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J6 - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers > J63 - Turnover ; Vacancies ; Layoffs

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