Investigating and Analyzing the Impact of Employment in Industry on Income Inequality

Over the past decades, the world economy has seen the loss of millions of well-paying manufacturing jobs. This trend has been observed in recent years in the Middle East. Some jobs in the Middle East have been lost forever due to the advent of technology and labor savings. At the same time, many low-wage jobs have been created in the service and retail sectors of their economies. The growth of technology reduces the demand for low-skilled workers and increases the demand for skilled workers, and as a result, the wage gap between the two groups increases. It is noteworthy that technology also affects income distribution by affecting macroeconomic variables such as growth, employment, income, and wage levels. In recent years, technological advances in the Middle East have intensified, and it is important to examine the impact of employment in industry on income inequality.This article uses panel data from Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Turkey, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Syria, the UAE and Egypt from 2000 to 2018 to examine the relationship between industrial employment and inequality. In this study, the variables of Gini coefficient, industrial employment, GDP per capita, the ratio of trade to GDP and the ratio of government expenditure to GDP have been used and econometric method is generalized method of moments two-step (GMM). The analysis shows that industrial employment is negatively related to income inequality, while other variables have little effect on income inequality.