The paper investigates the impact of firms’ wage structures and workers’ wage fairness perceptions on workers’ well-being. For this purpose, worker and establishment surveys are linked with administrative social security data. Four variables are generated, using approximately half a million worker-year observations, that describe firms’ wage structures and workers’ positions within the wage structures: own absolute wages, internal reference wages within firms, external reference wages, and the wage dispersion in firms. The interrelations between these wage structure variables, workers’ perceived wage fairness, and job satisfaction are then analyzed using regressions. Interpersonal wage comparisons between co-workers in the same firm and across firms as well as wage fairness perceptions are found to be significant determinants of workers’ well-being. The overall findings suggest that equity and social status considerations as well as altruistic preferences towards co-workers and inequality aversion are more important than signal considerations in this context.

本文研究了企业工资结构和工人工资公平感对工人福祉的影响。为此，工人和机构调查与社会保障行政数据相关联。使用大约 50 万个工人年的观察结果生成四个变量，描述企业的工资结构和工人在工资结构中的地位：自己的绝对工资、企业内的内部参考工资、外部参考工资和企业内的工资离散度。然后使用回归分析这些工资结构变量、工人感知的工资公平性和工作满意度之间的相互关系。人们发现，同一公司和不同公司同事之间的人际工资比较以及工资公平感是工人福祉的重要决定因素。总体研究结果表明，在这种情况下，公平和社会地位的考虑以及对同事的利他偏好和不平等厌恶比信号考虑更重要。