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Abstract
Abstract This paper contributes to the literature on the unequal effects of Covid-19 on workers and labor markets by focusing on the experience of migrant key workers in EU countries. Using survey data on over 2.7 million workers, our analysis explores three main dimensions. First, we document the over-representation of migrant workers in key occupations, particularly in low-qualified roles. Second, we examine the selection into key occupations. According to our estimates, women are more likely to be key workers, the relationship with education is V-shaped, and EU and Extra EU migrants are, respectively, 12 and 15 percent more likely than comparable natives to be key workers. Migrant women almost entirely drive these latter gaps. Finally, we estimate the labor market impact of Covid-19, showing that migrant key workers endured reductions in working hours similar to those of natives during the pandemic, but faced a 3 times higher increase in job loss probability. Our findings imply that although migrant workers played a crucial role in the response to the pandemic, they endured a harsher fate than native workers.
Highlights
The notion that the global spread of the Covid-19 virus occurred primarily through direct contact between individuals traveling across countries prompted some commentators andThis article supersedes an earlier version (“Immigrant Key Workers: Their Contribution to Europe’s Covid-19 Response” published in 2020 as European Commission Note JRC120537 and IZA Policy Paper 155), integrating and extending the original analysis in several directions
A potentially countervailing force against this negative narrative emerged from the growing awareness among the general public that migrant workers played a crucial role in responding to the pandemic crisis, especially as they were concentrated in many key occupations (Anderson et al 2021; Koinova et al 2023)
Since natives’ probability of being a key worker is 38% in our sample, the estimates reported in column (2) imply that European Union (EU) and Extra EU migrants are 9.7 percent and 13.6 percent more likely to be employed as key workers than native workers with similar characteristics, respectively
Summary
This article supersedes an earlier version (“Immigrant Key Workers: Their Contribution to Europe’s Covid-19 Response” published in 2020 as European Commission Note JRC120537 and IZA Policy Paper 155), integrating and extending the original analysis in several directions. In the U.S context, Gelatt (2020) provides early estimates of the presence of foreign-born workers in key occupations, while Blau et al (2021) and Allen et al (2023) highlight the over-representation of migrants relative to natives in these types of jobs. We estimated the presence of immigrants among key workers across occupations and countries in the European Union (EU) (Fasani and Mazza 2020), and studied how job characteristics affected the employment risk of migrants and natives during the Covid-19 pandemic (Fasani and Mazza 2023). We study the impact of the Covid-19 recession on labor market outcomes of migrants compared to natives, empirically assessing differences between workers employed in key and nonkey occupations.
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