Tasks, personality, and wages – an empirical analysis for Germany
Daniela Rohrbach-Schmidt, Federal Institute for Vocational Education (Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung, BIBB)
Technological change is leading to an increase in jobs that require non-routine cognitive tasks, i.e., analytic and interactive tasks. At the same time, various studies show that personality traits are important for labor market success. This article examines whether certain personality traits are rewarded differently, depending on the job task the individual performs.
Using German employee data from 2017/2018, this article examines the individual wage effects of job tasks and personality traits as well as their interaction.
Results suggest positive wage effects for analytical and interactive tasks, and for extraversion and emotional stability. In addition, the wage returns to openness vary depending on the task requirements at the workplace. Employees with higher levels of openness earn an additional wage return in analytic tasks, while they face a wage disadvantage in routine manual tasks.
To date, the combined wage effects of individual job tasks and personality traits have not been extensively studied because data about both job tasks and personality at the employee level is scarce. This article aims to contribute to our understanding of wage differences among employees.
About the speaker:
Daniela Rohrbach-Schmidt is a senior researcher at the German Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Cologne (Germany). Her fields of research are vocational education and training, occupations, and social inequality.