Here today, gone tomorrow: the rise in earnings fluctuations and its policy implications

The widespread trend towards greater social inequality increasingly, if belatedly, became a policy preoccupation in the years immediately preceding the outbreak of the crisis.

Sluggish growth, high unemployment and fiscal constraints suggest that the situation is likely to worsen further in the coming years. Against this background, this, the sixth ETUI Policy Brief European Economic and Employment Policy in 2010, written by Prof.

Tomas Korpi from Stockholm University, recalls a widely disregarded finding of earlier research: inequality can be split up into a longer-term and a short-run component. Inequality is higher, all else equal, if individuals’ short-run earnings fluctuations are larger.