Minimum wages and insurance within the firm

Minimum wages generate an asymmetric pass-through of rm shocks across workers. We establish this result leveraging employer-employee data on Italian metalmanufacturing rms, which face di erent wage oors that vary within occupations. In response to negative rm productivity shocks, workers close to the wage oors experience higher job separations but no wage loss. However, the wage of high-paid workers decreases, and more so in rms with higher incidence of minimum wages. A neoclassical model with complementarities across workers with di erent skills rationalizes these ndings. Our results uncover a novel channel that tilts the welfare gains of minimum wages toward low-paid workers.