Who are the low paid?

This paper provides pictures of low pay adult employees in Australia in 2004 drawing on data from the HILDA survey. The low paid are disaggregated into full-time and part-time employees. Estimates from multivariate probit models reveal that low wage employees are more likely to have casual status, single marital status, a low educational attainment, aged 21 to 30 or 60 plus, be employed in small firms, non-unionised, and have a lower occupational tenure. The magnitude of effect of these distinguishing characteristics is much larger for part-time versus full-time employees. Low paid employees, and more so in the case of full-time employees, are spread fairly evenly across households with different incomes. For about a half of low paid employees, a low paid job, especially if it is full-time, is a stepping stone to a higher paying job in the future.