Labour Market Integration Research Articles

Non-cognitive skills and labour market performance of immigrants.

This paper investigates how non-cognitive skills relate to the relative labour market performance of immigrants. Using the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) and the Five-Factor Model of personality as a proxy for the non-cognitive skills, we show that these skills matter for the labour market integration of immigrants in the host country. We use two comparison benchmarks. Compared to an average native, immigrants' non-cognitive skills, e.g., extroversion or emotional stability, can lead to 5-15 percentage points lower lifetime employment probability disadvantage implying a better overall integration. Comparing immigrants and natives with the same type and level of non-cognitive skills suggests that returns of extroversion and openness to experience are higher among immigrants, leading to 3-5 percentage points lower lifetime employment probability disadvantage. These results are robust with respect to self-selection, non-random returns to the home country, stability of personality, and estimators. Our detailed analysis suggests that non-cognitive skills (especially extroversion) are substitutes for the standard human capital measures (e.g., formal education and training) among low educated immigrants, while there is no significant relative return of non-cognitive skills among highly educated immigrants.

Association of medication clusters and subsequent labor market marginalization in refugee and Swedish-born young adults with common mental disorders in Sweden

Little is known about the association between common mental disorders (CMD) and labor market integration among refugee and Swedish-born young adults. Socially disadvantaged patients such as refugees are more likely to discontinue their medication use prematurely. This study aimed to identify clusters of individuals with similar psychotropic medication patterns; and examine the relationship between cluster membership with labor market marginalization (LMM) in refugee and Swedish-born young adults with CMD. The study uses a longitudinal matched cohort aged 18-24 years with CMD diagnoses from Swedish registers covering 2006–2016. Dispensed psychotropic medications (antidepressants, antipsychotics, anxiolytics, sedative-hypnotics, mood stabilizers) were collected one year before and after CMD diagnosis. Clusters of patients with similar time courses of prescribed dosages were algorithmically identified. The association of cluster membership with subsequent LMM, (long-term sickness absence, SA, disability pension, DP, or long-term unemployment, UE) was assessed using Cox regression. Among 12,472 young adults with CMD, there were 13.9% with SA, 11.9% with DP, and 13.0% with UE during a mean follow-up of 4.1 years (SD 2.3 years). Six clusters of individuals were identified. A cluster with a sustained increase in all medication types yielded the highest hazard ratio (HR [95% CI]) 1.69 [1.34, 2.13] for SA and 2.63 [2.05, 3.38] for DP. The highest HRs of UE give a cluster with a concentrated peak in antidepressants at CMD diagnosis (HR 1.61[1.18, 2.18]). Refugees and Swedish-born showed similar associations between clusters and LMM. To prevent LMM, targeted support and early assessment of CMD treatment are needed for individuals with a sustained increase in psychotropic medication after CMD diagnosis and for refugees in high-risk clusters for UE characterized by a rapid lowering of treatment dosages, which could be an indicator for premature medication discontinuation.

Labour market integration among young adults diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) at working age.

Multiple Swedish nationwide registers were used to identify 8045 individuals, aged 20-29, with an incident diagnosis of ADHD 2006-2011. Labour market integration was conceptualized according to the core-peripheral model as a continuum from a strong (core) to a weak (peripheral) connection to the labour market. Sequence analyses categorized clusters of labour market integration, from 1 year before to 5 years after their ADHD diagnosis for individuals diagnosed with ADHD and a matched control group without ADHD. Multinomial logistic regression computed odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) between sociodemographic factors and comorbid disorders and the identified clusters. About one-fourth of the young adults diagnosed with ADHD belonged to clusters characterized by a transition to a mainly peripheral labour market position, which was approximately four-times higher compared to controls without ADHD. Foremost, those living in small cities/villages (OR 1.9; CI 1.5-2.2), those having comorbid autism-spectrum disorder (OR 13.7; CI 6.8-27.5) or schizophrenia/psychoses (OR 7.8; CI 3.8-15.9) were associated with a transition towards a peripheral labour market position throughout the study period. Those with a high educational level (OR 0.1; CI 0.1-0.1), and men (OR 0.7; CI 0.6-0.8) were less likely to have a peripheral labour market position. Young adults diagnosed with ADHD are four-times more likely to be in the peripheral labour market position compared to those without ADHD. To increase labour market participation, special attention is warranted to those with low educational level, those living outside big cities and those with comorbid mental disorders.

The Impact of Health and Education on Labor Force Participation in Aging Societies: Projections for the United States and Germany from Dynamic Microsimulations

We project the labor force in the United States to 2060 and contrast the outcomes with comparative projections for Germany. In both countries, the population will age, but the demographic dynamics are fundamentally different. According to our dynamic microsimulations, the labor force in the U.S. will increase by 17 percent between 2020 and 2060 (about 29 million workers) despite population aging. In contrast, the labor force in Germany will decline by 11 percent (about 4.5 million workers). Our baseline projections indicate that an expansion of education will increase the labor force by about 3 million persons in the United States and about half a million persons in Germany by 2060. In several what-if scenarios, we examine the effects of further expanding education and of removing health barriers on labor force participation. Higher educational attainment among those with currently low education has the largest impact on labor force participation, relative to the additional years of schooling. However, health improvements and the labor market integration of people with health limitations suggest a larger increase in labor force participation rates. Using Sweden as a benchmark, we show that reducing the health participation gap would increase the U.S. labor force by as much as 13 million people in 2060 (+6.8 percent compared to our baseline).

Work Outcome Preferences of Muslim and Jewish Managers in Israel: Analyzing the Differences According to the Individualism-collectivism Model

While there is an increasing number of Muslim managers in Western countries, to the best of our knowledge no study has compared their work values to those of managers of other religions. The present study compares work outcome preferences (WOPs) of Muslim and Jewish managers in Israel, a Western country where Muslims constitute a substantial but marginalized minority. The methodology involves questionnaires administrated to 100 Muslim and 253 Jewish managers. The findings indicate significant differences between Muslim and Jewish managers across all work outcome preferences examined. While both groups view income as the most important value, Muslims have emphasized, in addition, serving society and status and prestige, whereas among Jews interest and satisfaction and interpersonal connections are more highly valued. The value differences between the two ethnoreligious groups can be explained mainly by cultural differences – individualism vs. collectivism. Implications are discussed in the context of labor market integration of minorities.

Place and immigrant labour market integration: A sequence analysis approach

Although the process of integrating immigrants into the labor market unfolds over many years, it is often modeled as outcomes (e.g. employment) at specific points in time. We contribute to the literature by providing empirical evidence of the sequence of events leading to active labor market participation of East African and EU15 immigrants to Sweden, whom we follow for up to 28 years. By combining the method of sequence analysis with binomial logit estimation, we can explain why individuals are sorted into different representative labor market sequences. A further contribution is that along the usual initial conditions (individual and geographic), we employ longitudinal micro data to find (1) representative sequences of movements between various types of neighborhoods and (2) an empirical estimate of individual ability, which turns out to be a strong predictor for immigrants entering an active labor market trajectory. Our results show that East Africans tend to reside in neighborhoods with a high degree of socioeconomic and ethnic segregation. Despite this, their labor market activity seems to be less influenced by neighborhood trajectories than EU15 immigrants. The labor market activity of EU15 immigrants and female East African immigrants is positively related to residing in less ethnically segregated and socioeconomically stronger neighborhoods. Our results are relevant to policy development since they point to the importance of the initial location of immigrants and their subsequent residential mobility.

Labor market integration of refugees: An institutional country-comparative perspective

Labor market integration of refugees: An institutional country-comparative perspective

Migration and wage inequality: a detailed analysis for German metropolitan and non-metropolitan regions

This study presents new evidence on immigrant-native wage gaps considering regional-specific differences between 2000 and 2019 in Germany. Using linked employer-employee-data, unconditional quantile regression models are estimated in order to assess the degree of labor market integration of foreign workers. The applied extended version of the Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method provides evidence on driving factors behind wage gaps along the entire wage distribution. Estimated results are presented not only for the whole of West Germany but also differentiated between metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas. On average, larger wage differentials are identified in metropolitan areas with at the same time a higher presence of foreign population. Detailed decompositions show that there are not only changes in the relative importance of explanatory factors over time, but also possible sources of wage differentials shift between different points of the wage distribution. Decisive explanatory variables in this context are the practised profession and the economic sector affiliation. Distinguishing between metropolitan and non-metropolitan areas, provides evidence that especially differences in educational attainment impact wage gaps in urban areas. Regarding the size of overall estimated wage gaps, after 2012 a reversal in trend and particular increasing tendencies around median wages are revealed.

A gyermekes anyák nehézségei a munka világában

The study examines the labour market integration and employment attitudes of women with young children among the factors influencing the extremely low Hungarian fertility rate. The literature review looks at the role of education, working while raising children, the role of careers, work-life balance and the glass ceiling phenomenon. In the empirical part, We will present, without any claims to exhaustiveness, a typical set of problems that fundamentally determine women’s presence in the labour market. We surveyed 1,033 respondents on attitudes towards work, time spent at home and difficulties in finding a job. The results of the questionnaire survey were evaluated using the SPSS 26.0 software package, including mainly descriptive statistical methods. We found that discrimination against mothers with young children still persists in job interviews. The contribution to the family’s financial expenses is the main factor influencing the return from maternity leave. When choosing a job, the key factor is the work schedule of the job applied for.

Territorial variance in the UK’s refugee politics and its consequences: Young Syrian refugees in England and Scotland

Access to social rights is crucial to refugee settlement and integration, and a whole range of social policy measures determine the limits on those rights. In the United Kingdom (UK) various relevant social policies are divided into devolved and reserved categories. This has resulted in a distinct territorial variance in social rights and welfare provisions within the country. The aim of this article is to explore how young Syrian refugees experience this territorial divergence in two jurisdictions: in Scotland, where they are part social citizens; and in England, where access to social rights is more limited. We use the prism of social citizenship as a means of examining the experiences of settlement and integration of Syrian refugees in the two nations. We draw out contrasts between these experiences and locate them within the interactions between the politics of welfare and refugee politics in the two nations. We argue that fine variances in England’s and Scotland’s social rights and welfare regimes have an impact on the settlement experiences of refugees. England’s less supportive regime fosters self-reliance and faster labour market integration among refugees. However, this environment pushes refugees in England to accept any job that they might find, no matter how precarious, or how far it may be from their educational qualifications, past professional experience or aspirations. This has overarching implications for refugees’ outlook on life and long-term planning.

The effect of social capital on migrant labor market success: evidence from refugee sponsorship in Canada

ABSTRACT Social ties play a central role in migrant labor market integration. Whereas existing research focusses on the co-ethnic ties that also drive migration, this paper examines the effect of connections that reach beyond the co-ethnic community. Studying the effects of such ties is challenging as they are generally both a cause and consequence of integration. We examine a case where a quasi-random sub-set of migrants is provided ties that reach outside the co-ethnic community upon arrival in Canada through a refugee sponsor program where community groups support refugees with whom they have no pre-existing ties called the Blended Visa-Office Referred (BVOR) program. Although sponsorship has no effect on the probability of employment, we find that it improves skill utilization. Refugees with sponsors are more likely to obtain higher-skilled employment and less likely to be self-employed. We also present data on the characteristics of friendship networks to support our argument.

A tale of two data sets: comparing German administrative and survey data using wage inequality as an example

The IAB’s Sample of Integrated Labour Market Biographies (SIAB) and the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) are the two data sets most commonly used to analyze wage inequality in Germany. While the SIAB is based on administrative reports by employers to the social security system, the SOEP is a survey data set in which respondents self-report their wages. Both data sources have their specific advantages and disadvantages. The objective of this study is to describe and compare the evolution of wage inequality for these two types of data. For this purpose, different sample restrictions are applied. The comparison without any harmonization of the data shows different levels and trends. When the information is largely harmonized, comparable trends and similar levels emerge.

A guide to preparing the sample of integrated labour market biographies (SIAB, version 7519 v1) for scientific analysis

The Sample of Integrated Labour Market Biographies (SIAB) is the most frequently requested data set provided by the Research Data Centre (FDZ) of the Federal Employment Agency (BA) at the Institute for Employment Research (IAB). However, preparing the SIAB for scientific analysis is a complicated and error-prone task. This article explains steps necessary to prepare the latest version of the SIAB (7519 v1) and gives examples of how the preparation can be done. Among other things, it shows how to impute right-censored wages, deal with parallel employment episodes, and clean up the data set. The supplementary material to this article contains extensively annotated Stata do-files to replicate our data preparation.

Informal social capital building in local employment services: Its role in the labour market integration of disadvantaged young people

AbstractThis article focuses on the role that local employment services (LES) play in informal social capital building for young people with a disadvantaged social background. The personal networks of these young people usually embed few useful resources for labour market integration, and LES actions may be an opportunity to informally build a network of contacts with better resources. To explore this possibility, biographical interviews were conducted with 24 young adults who used LES actions, and their employment trajectories were analysed. The findings highlight that these actions—especially those consisting of training or internships—provide social capital that is useful for labour market (re)integration. Linking social capital is the type of social capital that is most useful for job seeking, and it is especially effective in non‐metropolitan rural areas.

Overeducation in Arab Labour Markets; Different Measures, Different Outcomes

Since the introduction of the topic of overeducation, there has been a methodological debate on the most effective measurement tool. This debate has concluded that there is no single most appropriate method to measure overeducation, which depends entirely on data availability. By using the Integrated Labour Market Panel Survey (ILMPS) for Egypt (1998-2018), Jordan (2010-2016) and Tunisia (2014), this paper contributes to the existing literature on overeducation by measuring it across a sample of Arab countries using different methods as specified in the literature. The results reveal that the incidence of overeducation significantly varies across the measures. The subjective WA approach yielded the highest incidence of overeducation among the measures, whereas JA approach produced the lowest incidence. The RM approach, however, fell in a middle between the two other approaches and captured the region's political conflict and social unrest. Moreover, the Spearman rank correlation between the measurements was relatively low, indicating short overlaps among workers categorized as overeducated across measures.
 Keywords: Overeducation, Arab countries, Workers’ self-Assessment, Job analyst, Realized Matches.

Do Co-Ethnic Neighbourhoods Affect the Labour Market Outcomes of Immigrants? Longitudinal Evidence from Australia

Unlike the situation in other immigrant-receiving countries, the impact of co-ethnic neighbourhoods on immigrants’ life outcomes has been understudied in Australia. In addition, because of reliance on cross-sectional and sample survey data, existing Australian studies have not taken advantage of recent methodological progress that addresses selection bias. In that context, this paper estimates the impact of the size of co-ethnic neighbourhoods on labour force participation, employment, hours worked and income of immigrants using microdata from the 2006–16 Australian Census Longitudinal Dataset that spans three censuses. Drawing on this unique dataset, the paper applies a series of OLS regression models that address issues of individual and location sorting by applying individual-fixed effects, controlling for residential mobility, duration of residence and using an exogenous measure of co-ethnic neighbourhood size. We find a small significant negative effect on labour participation and wage, particularly for the non-tertiary educated and immigrants with low English proficiency. However, when we control for residential mobility, residence in co-ethnic neighbourhoods is no longer statistically significant, which highlights the importance of stringent methodological choices that control for settlement trajectories, while revealing that movement toward smaller co-ethnic neighbourhoods is associated with increased labour force participation. Our findings suggest that efforts by the Australian government to settle immigrants in regional areas with a limited migrant population should not affect the labour market outcomes of immigrants given that ethnic enclaves do not facilitate labour market integration in Australia.

Effects of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Mental Disorders on the Labor Market Integration of Young Syrian Refugees.

Civil war experience in the Syrian home country, insecurity and critical life events during migration, or adverse events in the receiving country might affect refugees' mental health. This paper addresses the effects of psychological distress and mental disorders on refugees' labor market integration in Germany between 2016 and 2021. We employ survey data from about 2700 young Syrians, delivering information on individuals' experience of migration and arrival in Germany in 2016. The survey data were successfully merged with register data, delivering detailed information regarding individuals' process of labor market integration and employment status from 2016 to 2021. Overall, the labor market integration of young refugees improved remarkably over time. In 2021, about 69% of the study population was integrated in a wider sense, and 30% was employed in fulltime contracts in 2021. However, the results indicate long-lasting effects of PTSD and mental disorders on individuals' labor market integration, whilst individuals' characteristics related to migration and arrival lose relevance over time and hardly affect labor market integration around five years after arrival. High PTSD scores in 2016 indicate a significantly reduced full-time employment probability in 2021. Anxiety and depression show significant negative effects on individuals' labor market integration, but with a less severe impact compared to a PTSD diagnosis.

Investigating Public–Private Cooperation in Migrant Labor Market Integration: A System Dynamics Study to Explore the Challenge for Greece

Migrant labor market integration is vital for the resilience of the host country and the migrant population’s sustainable livelihood. Greece, which hosts thousands of new immigrants, could seize the private sector’s experience to offer effective and holistic labor market integration opportunities to its migrant labor force. This paper explored the challenge for Greece as examined using a system dynamics methodology of the effects of wage subsidies and vocational training products on the employability of both the native and migrant populations in a framework of public–private cooperation under different scenarios and external factors.

Children or productive adults? Infantilisation and exploitation of refugees in Germany and Austria

ABSTRACT The persisting poor labour market integration of refugees and asylum seekers is puzzling, especially given host states’ declared desirability of refugees and asylum seekers being employed. Existing research on the determinants of refugees’ lack of labour market integration has analysed possible factors such as refugee health and education as well as host countries’ policies and discrimination. Based on original ethnographic data generated in Berlin and Vienna in 2019, I argue that the poor labour market integration can be better understood when we consider colliding perceptions, called scripts, of refugees and asylum seekers: At the same time that they are constructed as potentially useful labour, they are also constructed as helpless children who can never quite be ready for the labour market. I present each script’s ascriptions and prescriptions towards refugees and asylum seekers, show how these are enacted by the people subjected to them and analyse how disruptions occur when there are simultaneous, contradictory demands. Policy implications are that the host society’s perceptions do matter and that integration measures must be reviewed with regard to their potentially infantilising tendencies.

Governing policies and factors affecting the labor market integration of female accompanying spouses.

This study sought to ascertain the macro governing policies and factors that influence the integration of female accompanying spouses in the Free State, into the South African labor market. Utilizing a qualitative approach, thirteen one-on-one interviews, consisting of an initial purposive sample and a subsequent snowball sample, were conducted for data gathering. The study employed thematic analysis to interpret the data. The findings revealed that governing policies emerging from South Africa's migration legislation, and factors such as spouse dependence, reinforcement of traditional gender roles, and restrictive employment legislation which forced deskilling of qualifications, mainly impacted the conduct of accompanying spouses concerning the labor market. This study contributes to the literature on labor market integration (LMI) from an underexplored South-to-South standpoint by delving into the experiences of skilled female migrants in the family migration setting. A neglected facet of Michel Foucault's governmentality theory was used to investigate the labor market assimilation needs of female accompanying spouses. The study's qualitative approach renders the findings much less generalizable than a quantitative inquiry. It is important to note that LMI research is considerably setting-specific, despite some aspects of this study being applicable to other settings in the Global South. South Africa continues to be a pivotal regional hub for migration in the Global South, yet it has a complex migration governance framework that sets up a specific, while broadly exclusionary, macro context for accompanying spouses. This study zones in on issues that could inform more effective family migration policy.