Comparing Public and Private Earnings Using State Wage Surveys¹

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Belman, Dale^a | Franklin, Thomas E.^a | Heywood, John S.^a

Affiliations: [a] Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, P.O. Box 413, Milwaukee, Wsconsin 53201, USA

Note: [1] This paper was completed when Franklin was a graduate student working with Professors Belman and Heywood. The authors thank Bill Beutel at the Wisconsin Department of Industry, Labor and Human Relations who provided valuable background information on the Wage Survey and detailed comments on an early draft. Thanks are also expressed to the UWM workshop in applied economics for comments on the early results of this study.

Abstract: This paper shows how state wage surveys can be used to compare the earnings of public and private sector workers within states. This subject of long-running interest to economists has generated a complex and sometimes contradictory set of empirical results. Surprisingly little, if any, of this academic work has used the publicly available wage surveys that many states routinely collect. This paper serves as an introduction to such surveys and an application of the Wisconsin State Wage Survey for the purpose of comparing public and private compensation. While the evidence generally indicates public earnings are higher, we are careful to point out the limitations of our methodology which suggests this conclusion is incomplete.

DOI: 10.3233/JEM-1994-20201

Journal: Journal of Economic and Social Measurement, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 79-94, 1994