The outsourcing wage penalty along the wage distribution by gender

This paper studies if and to what extent the outsourced status entails a wage penalty for workers during the period 2005-2019 in France and how these differences vary between genders. Our findings show that workers in outsourced jobs suffer a wage penalty which is higher for female workers compared to male ones. The outsourcing penalty does not depend on part-time arrangements, the repetitive nature of the job nor sector of employment. The effect of these covariates adds to the direct effect, but only for female workers. The longitudinal analysis reinforces cross-sectional results: the outsourcing wage penalty is not due to changes in individual characteristics of the workers, but to differences in the job status and time-invariant characteristics between them. Overall, being an outsourced worker implies a worsening in the wage treatment and the gender gaps which, considering the expansion of this practice, lead to important policy issues.