Séminaire de Thepthida SOPRASEUTH

Séminaire de Thepthida SOPRASEUTH

Le 30 septembre 2025

Le prochain séminaire du GAINS se tiendra le mardi 30 septembre 2025 de 10h30 à 12h00 dans la salle Themisum. Thepthida Sopraseuth (CY Cergy Paris Université) présentera « Dual Routine Employment and the Minimum Wage ».

Abstract:

This paper examines the dual transformation of routine employment in France, characterized by the decline of permanent routine jobs and the rise of fixed-term routine jobs since the early 1980s. Over the same period, the minimum wage rose from 52% to 63% of the average routine wage in permanent jobs, and from 60% to 70% in temporary routine jobs. The share of workers paid at the minimum wage also evolved differently across contract types: it doubled in permanent contracts (from 10% in 1983 to 19% in 2019), while remaining consistently high in temporary contracts (around 22%). To account for these patterns, we develop a search-and-matching model with endogenous contract choice, and endogenous share of workers paid at the minimum wage within each contract type. Calibrated to the 2019 French labor market, it replicates key empirical regularities and highlights the institutional drivers of labor market dualism and prevalence of minimum wage across contract types. A higher minimum wage compresses the surplus from low-productivity matches under permanent contracts, pushing firms toward more flexible, temporary arrangements. A lower labor market tightness partly mitigates the rise in labor costs. The model provides a novel mechanism for understanding the reallocation of routine employment across contract types and shows how the minimum wage differentially shapes the share of workers paid at the wage floor across contract types.