Native-Immigrant Wage Differentials and Occupational Segregation in the Greek Labour Market

Abstract

This paper explores native-immigrant wage differentials in the Greek labour market. Data from the most recent Greek Household Budget Survey (2004-05) were employed, four alternative occupational categories were considered and occupational choice was explicitly modelled. Controlling for occupational selectivity, occupation-specific wage regressions for representative samples of employed native and immigrant workers were estimated and an augmented decomposition technique was utilised to analyze inter and intra occupation wage differentials. The obtained results demonstrate that roughly 48 per cent of the average wage differential can not be explained by differences in observed characteristics and that the larger component of this unexplained part is due to asymmetrical occupational access by native and immigrant workers.

Keywords: wage differentials, immigration, occupational selectivity, Greece

JEL Classification: J31, J61, O52