Wages and employment by skill level in Southern and Eastern Europe during the crisis

Occupations and sectors are the two fundamental dimensions of structural change. From the evolution of the high/low-skill employment levels and wage ratio, we can understand which sectors have been undertaking a process of technical change. By using Eu-Silc database we investigate four “Southern Europe” countries (Italy, Spain, Greece, Portugal), three “Eastern Europe” countries (Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria), UK and Austria. Our analysis shows that the crisis seems to have radically changed the behavior of economies and sectors. It emerges that Poland behaves in a similar way to Austria (with a growing role of technology and Skill Biased Technical Change), while in Hungary the economic system seems to be restructuring as Iberian countries.