- Home
- Publications
- Who Fared Better? The Fortunes Of Performance Pay And Fixed Pay Workers Through Recession
Who Fared Better? The Fortunes of Performance Pay and Fixed Pay Workers through Recession
![](https://www.niesr.ac.uk/wp-content/themes/niesr/assets/img/calendar-alt.png)
![](https://www.niesr.ac.uk/wp-content/themes/niesr/assets/img/chain.png)
Related Themes
Labour, Employment and WagesJournal
British Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 55
External Resources
Issue
4
Using the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, we explore whether the fortunes of employees paid for performance differ from those of fixed pay workers during recession. Only in the bottom quintile of the wage distribution were performance pay employees more likely to experience greater falls in real wages than fixed pay employees. Accounting for fixed unobserved worker characteristics suggests that this was not due to the wage‐setting mechanism itself, but that other factors are likely to be at play. While across most of the earnings distribution there was little evidence of greater wage flexibility among performance pay employees, they did have longer job tenure than fixed pay employees over the recession.
Related Blog Posts
![](https://www.niesr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Living-Standards-MI-640x640.jpg)
How Are UK Living Standards Faring Ahead of the General Election?
Adrian Pabst
Robyn Smith
29 May 2024
4 min read
![](https://www.niesr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/iStock-1049795356-square-640x640.jpg)
Breaking Down the Different Types of Pension in the UK
Robyn Smith
Adrian Pabst
25 Mar 2024
6 min read
![](https://www.niesr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/National-Minimum-Wage-Blog-640x640.jpg)
What Are the Implications of the Rising National Minimum Wage and National Living Wage Rates?
Ekaterina Aleynikova
Adrian Pabst
19 Mar 2024
5 min read
![](https://www.niesr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Post-Scarcity-Society-640x640.png)
Related Projects
Related News
![Two females, one older than the other, in a workplace setting in front of a computer](https://www.niesr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Age-Discrimination-in-the-Workplace-640x640.png)
![](https://www.niesr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/NICs-Tax-Pre-Budget-piece_Social-Image-640x437.jpg)
![](https://www.niesr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Wage%20Tracker%20-%20January%202021%20-%20Social%20Image_0-640x360.jpg)
Press Release: Compositional effects push up average weekly earnings at the end of 2020
26 Jan 2021
2 min read
![](https://www.niesr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Wage%20Tracker%20-%20December%202020%20-%20Social%20Image_0-640x360.jpg)
Press Release: 2020 shaping up to be the worst year for total pay growth since 2009
15 Dec 2020
2 min read
Related Publications
![](https://www.niesr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Labour-Market-Income-640x640.png)
![](https://www.niesr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/MicrosoftTeams-image-640x640.png)
![](https://www.niesr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Low-Pay-Commission-Project-640x640.png)
Pay-Setting Among Employers in the Agriculture, Cleaning, Hospitality and Retail Sectors
11 Mar 2024
Research Report
![walking over rickety brige with covid-19 written on it](https://www.niesr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/boob_bust_winteroutlook-640x640.jpg)
Job Boom or Job Bust? The Effect of the Pandemic on Actual and Measured Job and Employment Growth
07 Feb 2024
UK Economic Outlook Box Analysis
Related events
![Event Image](https://www.niesr.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/GROW%20Event%20-%20Social%20Image.jpg)
Improving the Recruitment of Older Workers
![](https://www.niesr.ac.uk/wp-content/themes/niesr/assets/img/arrow-right.png)
![](https://www.niesr.ac.uk/wp-content/themes/niesr/assets/img/arrow-right.png)