Abstract:
This study wants to investigate the wage gap (wage premium or wage discount) between public and private sector among bachelor degree holder employees in Thailand, especially, the relationship between individual characteristics and these gap, namely gender, age, region, occupation, education, etc. The size of the public sector wage premium is relatively high in countryside but will change into wage discount in central region. Premium by occupation in public sector can only be found in technician and service worker group, but discount for senior official and professional. In other words, the higher the job position they are in workplace, the higher chance the premium will shift from public sector to private sector. The public sector’s gender wage gap is by far smaller compare to private sector counterpart. Supplementary benefits received in cash such as bonuses, overtime and other cash, are relatively higher in private sector than those in public sector, when taking into account, the size of wage discount for public sector will get bigger. However, it is likely that the discount for public sector could be lower than this estimation alone given that the public sector offers more benefits in term of welfare than the private sector, and these results do not factor in those non‐pecuniary features of employment, for example job security, health-care benefits, disability insurance and old-age pension.
