Skill heterogeneity and equilibrium unemployment

Opportunities facing skilled and unskilled workers diverged over the last quarter of the twentieth century in the UK. We develop an empirical framework consistent with these trends that highlights the importance of skill heterogeneity in both wage setting and labour demand in explaining aggregate labour market outcomes. The framework enables us to quantify the macroeconomic effects of shocks that impact particularly on one group rather than another. Copyright 2007 , Oxford University Press.