Is there a trade-off between the employment rate and wage, inequality and poverty levels?
Some European countries (France, Spain, Italy, etc.) have a much lower employment rate than the European or OECD average. An important question for economic policy choices in these countries is whether there is a trade-off between the employment rate and wage, inequality and poverty levels . This is the case if a high employment rate requires low wages for low-skilled wage earners and therefore the existence of working poor. When we compare the employment rate with relative wages in domestic services, inequality (before and after redistributive policies) and poverty across OECD countries, we see that a high employment rate is not correlated with low wages in services, high inequality (on the contrary) or high poverty (on the contrary). There is no trade-off between the employment rate and inequality, poverty or the wage level in services.