It is well documented that earnings inequalities have risen in many high-income countries. Less clear are the linkages between rising income inequality and workplace dynamics, how within- and between-workplace inequality varies across countries, and to what extent these inequalities are moderated by national labor market institutions. In order to describe changes in the initial between- and within-firm market income distribution we analyze administrative records for 2,000,000,000+ job years nested within 50,000,000+ workplace years for 14 high-income countries in North America, Scandinavia, Continental and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia. We find that countries vary a great deal in their levels and trends in earnings inequality but that the between-workplace share of wage inequality is growing in almost all countries examined and is in no country declining. We also find that earnings inequalities and the share of between-workplace inequalities are lower and grew less strongly in countries with stronger institutional employment protections and rose faster when these labor market protections weakened. Our findings suggest that firm-level restructuring and increasing wage inequalities between workplaces are more central contributors to rising income inequality than previously recognized.

Association of Free Trade Unions of Slovenia 1000 Ljubljana Slovenia

College of Economics Nihon University Tokyo 101 8360 Japan

Department of Economics and Business Central European University Budapest 1051 Hungary

Department of Economics Vienna University of Economics and Business Vienna AU 1020 Austria

Department of Organization Copenhagen Business School Copenhagen DK 2000 Denmark

Department of Social Sciences Augusta University Augusta GA 30912

Department of Sociology and Human Geography University of Oslo Oslo N 0851 Norway

Department of Sociology Stockholm University Stockholm 114 18 Sweden

Department of Sociology University of Barcelona Barcelona 08007 Spain

Department of Sociology University of California Berkeley CA 94720 1980

Department of Sociology University of California Irvine CA 92617

Department of Sociology University of Groningen Groningen 9712 TG The Netherlands

Department of Sociology University of Haifa Haifa 31905 Israel

Department of Sociology University of Massachusetts Amherst MA 01003

Department of Sociology University of Massachusetts Amherst MA 01003;

Faculty of Social Sciences University of Ljubljana 1000 Ljubljana Slovenia

Institute for Defense Analyses Alexandria VA 22311 1882

Institute of Sociology Czech Academy of Sciences Prague 11000 Czech Republic

Observatoire sociologique du changement MaxPo Sciences Po Centre national de la recherche scientifique Paris 75007 France

School of Labor and Employment Relations University of Illinois Urbana Champaign Urbana IL 61801

Social Analysis and Modelling Division Statistics Canada Ottawa Canada K1A 0T6

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2020 May 12;117(19):10105-10107. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2005162117. PubMed

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2020 Jun 16;117(24):13847. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2009782117. PubMed

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