The US Finance Wage Premium Before and After the Financial Crisis: A Decomposition Exercise

Does the recent financial crisis change the wage structures of the US finance and nonfinance sectors? In this article, we study the wage gap between workers in these two sectors between 1990 and 2011. Using data from the Current Population Survey, we find that the finance wage premium increased over time and only dropped modestly during the crisis. Using the Oaxaca–Blinder method to decompose the wage gap into ‘explained’ and ‘unexplained’ parts, we also find that the wage gap was entirely driven by unexplained factors.