Labor Market Performance Of Immigrants 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.

Workplace Segregation and the Labour Market Performance of Immigrants

Workplace Segregation and the Labour Market Performance of Immigrants

From "guest workers" to EU migrants: A gendered view on the labour market integration of different arrival cohorts in Germany

Objective: This paper draws on data from the Microcensus to provide a long-term overview of the labour market performance of different arrival cohorts of non-German women and men who immigrated to (western) Germany.
 Background: While there is a large body of research on the labour market outcomes of migrants to Germany, a long-term and gender-specific overview is missing.
 Method: We provide descriptive analyses of the employment rates, working hours, and occupational status levels of different arrival cohorts by gender, calendar year, and duration of stay. The data cover the time period 1976-2015.
 Results: With the exception of the earliest cohort, migrant women and men were consistently less likely to be employed than their German counterparts. While the average working hours of migrant women of earlier cohorts were longer than those of German women, this pattern reversed due to a considerable decline in the average working hours of migrant women across subsequent cohorts. The occupational status levels of female and male migrants increased across the arrival cohorts, corresponding to higher levels of education. Analyses by duration of stay indicate that the occupational status of the arrival cohorts tended to decline during their initial years of residence, and to stagnate thereafter. This pattern seems to be due in part to selective outmigration.
 Conclusion: Our results clearly show that the labour market performance of immigrants varied greatly by arrival cohort, reflecting the conditions and policy contexts during which they entered Germany. This conclusion applied especially to migrant women.

Linguistic Proximity and the Labour Market Performance of Immigrant Men in Canada

AbstractThe ability to speak the language of the destination country plays a key role in the labour market performance of immigrants. To assess the influence of language on economic assimilation, we combine large samples of the restricted version of the Canadian Census (1991–2006) with both a measure of proximity to English of the most used language in the immigrant’s country of origin, and information about wages and the occupational skills required for the jobs immigrant men hold. Immigrant men whose language is more distant from English earn lower wages and work in jobs requiring more physical strength and fewer social and analytical skills, than the jobs of similar native‐born workers. More importantly, linguistic distance imposes a relatively larger wage penalty on college‐educated upon entry into the country than on non‐college educated individuals. However, both the wage and the analytical skill requirements of the jobs held by college‐educated immigrant men from linguistically distant countries increase markedly with time in the country, while their physical strength requirements decline moderately. Our analysis suggests that facilitating language acquisition may speed up the labour market assimilation of immigrant men in Canada.

Naturalization and labor market performance of immigrants in Germany

AbstractNaturalization may be a relevant policy instrument affecting immigrant integration in host‐country labor markets. We study the effect of naturalization on labor market outcomes of immigrants in Germany. We apply recent survey data and exploit a reform of naturalization rules in an instrumental variable estimation. In our sample of recent immigrants, linear regression yields positive correlations between naturalization and beneficial labor market outcomes. Once we account for the endogeneity of naturalization, most coefficients decline in magnitude and lose statistical significance: male immigrants’ labor market outcomes do not benefit significantly from naturalization. Naturalization reduces the risks of unemployment and welfare dependence for female immigrants. For males and females, the propensity to hold a permanent contract increases as a consequence of naturalization. The results are robust to modifications of samples and the instrument.

Skilled Migration Policy and the Labour Market Performance of Immigrants

This paper studies whether migration policy, besides managing a country's population size, is a suitable tool to influence immigrants' labour market outcomes. To do so, it uses a migration policy change that occurred in Australia in the late 1990s and data collected by the Longitudinal Survey of Migrants to Australia. The statistical techniques employed in the empirical analysis consistently reveal that the policy change has no detectable impact on the employment rate, wages, over-education, occupational downgrading, and (self-reported) use of skills for male immigrants, who account for about 75% of the sample, while they have a modest short-term positive impact on female immigrants. These results support the view that migration policy is an ineffective policy tool to influence migrants' labour market outcomes. However, the economic relevance of making an effective use of migrants' skills provides scope for close coordination between immigration and employment policy to ensure that efforts in attracting foreign talent are not dissipated by labour market frictions and other inefficiencies.

Naturalization and Labor Market Performance of Immigrants in Germany

Naturalization may be a relevant policy instrument affecting immigrant integration in host-country labor markets. We study the effect of naturalization on labor market outcomes of immigrants in Germany. We apply recent survey data and exploit a reform of naturalization rules in an instrumental variable estimation. In our sample of recent immigrants, linear regression yields positive correlations between naturalization and beneficial labor market outcomes. Once we account for the endogeneity of naturalization most coefficients decline in magnitude and lose statistical significance: male immigrants' labor market outcomes do not benefit significantly from naturalization. Naturalization reduces the risks of unemployment and welfare dependence for female immigrants. For males and females, the propensity to hold a permanent contract increase as a consequence of naturalization. The results are robust to modifications of samples and the instrument.

Naturalization and Labor Market Performance of Immigrants in Germany

Naturalization and Labor Market Performance of Immigrants in Germany

The Performance of Immigrants in the German Labor Market

This paper uses a large survey (SOEP) to update and deepen our knowledge about the labor market performance of immigrants in Germany. It documents that immigrant workers initially earn on average 20 percent less than native workers with otherwise identical characteristics. The gap is smaller for immigrants from advanced countries, with good German language skills, and with a German degree, and larger for others. The gap declines gradually over time but at a decreasing rate and much stronger for more recent cohorts. Less success in obtaining jobs with higher occupational autonomy explains half of the wage gap. Immigrants are initially less likely to participate in the labor market and more likely to be unemployed. While participation fully converges after 20 years, immigrants always remain more likely to be unemployed than the native labor force.

Prior host-country work experience and immigrant labor market outcomes: evidence from Canada

Recent changes to immigration selection policies favor skilled workers with prior work experience in the immigrant host country. Using unique administrative tax data for Canada, we estimate earnings equations to quantify the difference in earnings of immigrants with prior Canadian experience (prefilers) and those without prior experience (non-prefilers). We find that, relative to non-prefilers, entry earnings are higher for prefilers and, for male immigrants, this earnings advantage persists for at least 20 years after arrival. We show that the primary source of the higher entry earnings of prefilers is a higher return to foreign experience. In addition, the prefiler earnings advantage is largest for university graduates and the return to foreign experience is higher for prefilers from Western countries than those from the rest of the world. Our findings suggest that a move towards an immigrant selection system which uses previous host-country work experience as a criterion will improve the labor market performance of immigrants.

The Labor Market Performance of Immigrants in Germany

The paper uses a large survey (GSOEP) to analyze the labor market performance of immigrants in Germany. It finds that new immigrant workers earn on average 20 percent less than native workers with otherwise identical characteristics. The gap is smaller for immigrants from advanced countries, with good German language skills, and with a German degree, and larger for others. The gap declines gradually over time. Less success in obtaining jobs with higher occupational autonomy explains half of the wage gap. Immigrants are also initially less likely to participate in the labor market and more likely to be unemployed. While participation fully converges after 20 years, immigrants always remain more likely to be unemployed than the native labor force.

The Labor Market Performance of Immigrants in Germany

The Labor Market Performance of Immigrants in Germany

Language skills and labor market performance of immigrants in the Netherlands

Many immigrants in the Netherlands have poor Dutch language skills. They face problems in speaking and reading Dutch. Our paper investigates how these problems affect their labor market performance in terms of employment, hours of work and wages. We find that for female immigrants language problems have significantly negative effects on hourly wages but not on employment probability and hours of work. For male immigrants language problems do not affect employment probability, hours of work or hourly wages.

Language Skills and Labor Market Performance of Immigrants in the Netherlands

Many immigrants in the Netherlands have poor Dutch language skills. They face problems in speaking and reading Dutch. Our paper investigates how these problems affect their labor market performance in terms of employment, hours of work and wages. We find that for female immigrants language problems have significantly negative effects on hourly wages but not on employment probability and hours of work. For male immigrants language problems do not affect employment probability, hours of work or hourly wages.

The Effect of Linguistic Proximity on the Occupational Assimilation of Immigrant Men in Canada

This paper contributes to the analysis of the integration of immigrants in the Canadian labour market by focusing in two relatively new dimensions. We combine the large samples of the restricted version of the Canadian Census (1991-2006) with both a new measure of linguistic proximity of the immigrant’s mother tongue to that of the destination country, and with information of the occupational skills embodied in the jobs immigrants hold. This allows us to assess the role that language plays in the labour market performance of immigrants and to better study their career progression relative to the native born. Weekly wage differences between immigrants and the native born are driven mostly by penalties associated with immigrants’ lower returns to social skills, but not to analytical or manual skills. Interestingly, low linguistic proximity between origin and destination language imposes larger wage penalties to the university-educated, and significantly affects the status of the jobs they hold. The influence of linguistic proximity on the skill content of jobs immigrants hold over time also varies by the educational level of the migrant. We also show that immigrants settling in Quebec and whose mother tongue is close to French have similar or better labour market outcomes (relative to native-born residents in Quebec) than immigrants with close linguistic proximity to English settling outside Quebec (relative to native born residents in the rest of Canada). However, since wages in Quebec are lower than elsewhere, immigrants in Quebec earn less in absolute terms than those residing elsewhere.

Does citizenship matter? The economic impact of naturalizations in Germany

This paper analyses whether citizenship acquisition affects the labour market performance of immigrants in Germany. The study uses actual micro data from the employment sample of the Institute for Employment Research, which covers more than 80% of the entire labour force in Germany. The econometric analysis has been carried out using panel data techniques, which allow to disentangle the effects of self-selection and legal impact of citizenship acquisition. Estimates from a pooled OLS specification suggest the existence of a wage premium for naturalized immigrants of both genders. Fixed effects estimates for males show an increased wage growth in the years following naturalization, consistent with the argument that naturalization increases the labour market opportunities of immigrants. Results for female employees indicate that the wage premium of naturalized women is solely the result of a positive self-selection process.

Labor Market Performance of Immigrants in Smaller Regions of Western Countries: Some Evidence from Atlantic Canada

Despite recent interest in regionalization of immigration in host nations, most studies have analyzed immigrants’ economic performance by largely focusing on their overall national performance. A regional analysis is necessary because changing geographic distribution of immigrants can affect their economic performance positively or negatively. The present paper focuses on Atlantic Canada whose share in annual Canadian immigrant inflows has been traditionally low, but where recent policy initiatives have resulted in greater attraction and retention of immigrants. Immigrants are found performing better than non-immigrants in regional labor market. The importance of regional analysis of immigrants’ economic performance and contribution in host nations is highlighted.

The Labor Supply of Immigrants in the United States: The Role of Changing Source Country Characteristics

Economists have long explored the role that source country characteristics have in determining the labor market performance of immigrants. For example, George J. Borjas (1987) models the migration decision as determined by the expected difference in the immigrant’s position in the earnings distribution in the host and source countries. Deborah A. Cobb-Clark (1993) extends Borjas’s model to immigrant women. Similarly, other studies explore how culture or traditional gender roles in the source country persist across borders and influence the labor market outcomes of immigrant women in the United States. For example, Heather Antecol (2000, 2001) and Francine D. Blau, Lawrence M. Kahn, and Kerry L. Papps (2008) find a positive relationship between source country characteristics and the labor market outcomes of immigrant women in the US. Absent from the existing literature, however, is an examination of how changes over time in a source country’s characteristics are associated with changes in the labor market outcomes of immigrants from that source country. In this paper, we study how changes in the source country characteristics are associated with changes in the labor supply outcomes of immigrants in the US, and whether these relationships are different across men and women. In particular, we focus on the changes in three The Labor Supply of Immigrants in the United States: The Role of Changing Source Country Characteristics

Immigrant Earnings in the Italian Labour Market

The aim of this paper is to assess the relationship between individual skills and labour market performance of immigrants residing in Lombardy during the period 2001-2005. We use a recent dataset collected by the NGO ISMU, which includes information on individual characteristics and the legal status of each immigrant. Our results show that returns on schooling are positive and range from 0.8 per cent to 0.9 per cent, a figure that is much lower than the one estimated for native Italians. This result is robust to a number of specifications and tests. In particular, it is not influenced by the legal status of the alien or by a possible self-selection in the labour supply. Moreover, although more talented immigrants tend to self-select in the Lombardy region compared with the other Italian regions, their return on schooling remains low compared with natives. We also show that a certain heterogeneity exists across educational levels and countries of origin: immigrants from Eastern Europe are better able to exploit their human capital, especially when they hold a university degree, while the school-wage profile of Latin Americans and Asians is basically flat. Finally, there is some evidence of a cohort effect in migration, but this tends to impact on the return on experience rather than on the return on schooling.

Labour Market Outcomes for Immigrants in New Zealand

This paper uses data from the 1997-2007 New Zealand Income Survey to examine the labour market performance of immigrants in New Zealand. Specifically, we use a synthetic cohort approach to examine how employment rates and hourly wages for immigrants compare to those for the New Zealand-born. Extending previous work, we examine how outcomes for immigrants change with years spent in New Zealand in a semi-parametric manner that makes no assumptions about how labour market outcomes evolve as more host country experience is acquired. The pattern of entry disadvantage followed by subsequent relative improvement is more pronounced for employment rates than for wage rates.