Immigrants and Employer-provided Training

Much has been written about the labour market outcomes for immigrants in their host countries, particularly with regard to earnings, employment and occupational attainment. However, much less attention has been paid to the question of whether immigrants are as likely to receive employer-provided training relative to comparable natives. As such training should be crucial in determining the labour market success of immigrants in the long run it is a critically important question. Using data from a large-scale survey of employees in Ireland, we find that immigrants are less likely to receive training from employers, with immigrants from the New Member States of the EU experiencing a particular disadvantage. The immigrant training disadvantage arises in part from a failure on the part of immigrants to get employed by training-oriented firms. However, they also experience a training disadvantage relative to natives within firms where less training is provided.     

Immigration and the earnings of youth in the U.S.

"This article reports findings that have emerged from an effort made at statistically measuring the effects of immigration on the earnings of U.S.-born youth. The presence of immigrants arriving before 1965 has a positive impact on youth earnings. Recently arrived immigrants impact negatively, however. These results are consistent with recent findings that the skill level of immigrants arriving within the last two decades is lower relative to that of immigrants arriving earlier. The results also show that the negative effects diminish as the youth ages, reflecting skill acquisition and job mobility of the young worker into jobs less vulnerable to competition from immigrant workers."     

IMMIGRATION,SKILL HETEROGENEITY,AND QUALIFICATION MISMATCH

We investigate the effects of U.S. immigration in a comprehensive search and matching framework that allows for skill heterogeneity, imperfect substitutability between skilled and unskilled inputs, different search cost between natives and immigrants, cross‐skill matching, and imperfect transferability of foreign human capital. When we simulate the effects of the U.S. immigration that took place between the years 2000 and 2009, we find that both skilled and unskilled natives, as well as skilled and unskilled immigrants, gain in terms of income and employment. We also investigate the effects of an improvement in the transferability of human capital across borders and find that, although it has some redistributive effects, overall it benefits both immigrants and natives. (JEL F22, J61, J64)     

Needed but Not Liked – The Impact of Labor Market Policies on Natives’ Opinions about Immigrants

This article builds on the notion that immigrants’ integration into the labor market benefits migrants and shapes natives’ opinions about immigrants. Using insights from the newest literature on labor immigration and drawing upon the literature on attitudes toward immigrants, the article explores in a multilevel design the impact that regulations in the EU member states concerning immigrants’ access to domestic labor markets have on threat perceptions and on opinions about immigrants’ economic role. It finds that labor market regulations have a positive effect on opinions about immigrants’ economic role and reduce the negative relationships between precarious labor market status and opinions about the economic role. However, a robust effect of labor market regulations on threat perceptions was not found. Our results imply that labor market incorporation rules need to be accompanied by other measures to close the gap between natives and immigrants.     

US and them: Job quality differences between natives and immigrants in Europe

Using microdata from the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) and aggregate indicators of labour market institutions, this article compares the job quality of native and non-native workers across European countries and analyses the impact of the institutional settings on the job quality differential between both groups. The LFS is used to measure a job quality index for the period 2005–2017. We find that some immigrant groups fare worse than natives, the contribution of the “composition effect” to explain this differential is large, and the institutional framework affects the immigration gap in job quality. In particular, some labour market institutions (more centralized wage bargaining, stricter employment protection legislation) tend to be detrimental for immigrants relative to natives, while integration policies seem to work well in reducing these differences.     

Recent Immigration to Canada and the United States: A Mixed Tale of Relative Selection

Using large‐scale census data and adjusting for sending‐country fixed effect to account for changing composition of immigrants, we study relative immigrant selection to Canada and the U.S. during 1990–2006, a period characterized by diverging immigration policies in the two countries. Results show a gradual change in selection patterns in educational attainment and host‐country language proficiency in favor of Canada as its post‐1990 immigration policy allocated more points to the human capital of new entrants. Specifically, in 1990, new immigrants in Canada were less likely to have a B.A. degree than those in the U.S.; they were also less likely to have a highschool or lower education. By 2006, Canada surpassed the U.S. in drawing highly educated immigrants, while continuing to attract fewer low‐educated immigrants. Canada also improved its edge over the U.S. in terms of host‐country language proficiency of new immigrants. Entry‐level earnings, however, do not reflect the same trend: Recent immigrants to Canada have experienced a wage disadvantage compared to recent immigrants to the U.S., as well as Canadian natives. One plausible explanation is that while the Canadian points system has successfully attracted more educated immigrants, it may not be effective in capturing productivity‐related traits that are not easily measurable.     

Labour Market Limbo: The Uneven Integration of Co‐Ethnic Argentine Immigrants in Spain

Immigration and citizenship laws that discriminate by race, ethnicity, and national origins are increasingly illegitimate in contemporary democracies, yet laws that grant privileged access and membership to immigrants who share natives' ethnicity persist. This enduring positive selection rests upon the assumption that co‐ethnicity fosters integration. Countering this logic, this article centers on co‐ethnics' insertion into local labour markets. It draws from a case study of Aguaviva, Spain, a depopulating village in which both co‐ethnic Argentines and Romanian immigrants reside. The analysis qualifies the trend of deracialization in immigration and citizenship policy and shows that positive preferences do not uniformly foster integration. In dual labour market systems, co‐ethnics struggle because they are not different enough for secondary sector jobs reserved for immigrant “others,” yet in the primary sector they enter into direct competition with natives.     

Language Acquisition,Employment Status,and the Earnings of Jewish and Non-Jewish Immigrants in Israel

This article analyses the Hebrew language proficiency, probability of employment, and labour market earnings of immigrants in Israel. It uses the 2010/11 Immigrant Absorption Survey conducted by the Israeli CBS. In addition to standard immigration, demographic, and human capital variables, the analysis includes unique features: the study of long-duration immigrants, analyses of males’ and females’ primary reasons for immigration, the subsidized intensive Hebrew language training programme, Ethiopian Jews, and Jewish and non-Jewish immigrants from the Former Soviet Union. Results from multivariate analyses largely accord with the “standard theoretical model” of language proficiency regarding the mechanisms of “exposure”, “efficiency”, and “economic incentives”. Acquaintance with the local language increases the likelihood of being employed and has positive earnings outcomes. We discuss implications of the findings for public policy which can improve the adjustment of these new immigrants to their new society, hence also moderate inter-group tensions.     

The labor supply of male Hispanic immigrants in the United States

"Several recent studies have begun the systematic analysis of the labor market characteristics of Hispanics in the United States. This research has focused on two related issues: a) how the immigration and assimilation experience affects Hispanic earnings; and b) the measurement of wage differentials between Hispanics and non-Hispanics. The main findings of this research are that the earnings of (some) Hispanic immigrants rise rapidly after immigration; and that the wage differential between Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites is generally due to differences in observable skill characteristics. This article extends previous research by focusing on another labor market characteristic: the labor supply of Hispanic immigrants."     

The Receipt of Transfer Payments by Immigrants in Sweden

Using the native-born as a benchmark, this article examines the reliance of immigrants on Sweden's social safety net. Both in the raw data, and after conditioning on a number of explanatory variables, we find that there are differences between immigrants and natives regarding participation in the Swedish income security system. We also find that there are differences in this respect between immigrants from different regions as well as between more recent and earlier cohorts of immigrants. As regards unemployment insurance benefits and cash labour market assistance, no clear pattern can be discerned in the results. In the case of early retirement pension and social assistance, however, the picture looks different. Immigrants arriving at an early date from typical labour immigration regions are over-represented in early retirement. Immigrants, especially non-European immigrants with a recent date of arrival, are over-represented among recipients of social assistance. The overall conclusion is that the immigrants' total rate of participation in the income security system is determined by their rate of unemployment and their state of health. On the other hand, the distribution of their participation among the different components of the income security system is highly dependent on their length of residence in Sweden and where they come from.     

What Makes an Entrepreneur and Does it Pay? Native Men,Turks, and Other Migrants in Germany

This paper focuses on the entrepreneurial endeavours of immigrants' and natives in Germany, concentrating on Turks, Germany's largest immigrant group and one under‐studied in the literature. Self‐employed Turks in Germany represent about 70 per cent of all Turkish entrepreneurs in the European Union. We use data from the German Socio‐economic Panel to study patterns of self‐employment. First, we identify the characteristics of the self‐employed individuals and understand their underlying drive into self‐employment. Next we investigate how immigrant entrepreneurs fare in the labour market and compare their earnings to those of the natives. It is important for decision makers to understand entrepreneurial patterns so that they can shape policy that better fosters entrepreneurial activities. This paper presents several findings that can inform better policymaking. First, our investigation indicates that education is not decisive in determining whether one will choose self‐employment over salaried work nor in explaining earnings. The estimated age‐earnings profiles are the same for natives and immigrants, while the proclivity to become self‐employed is concave with respect to age for both groups. Immigrants' start with a higher probability to work than natives but have a slower increase in the self‐employment probabilities thereafter. The earnings of self‐employed immigrants' are higher initially, but their earnings path crosses eventually that of the natives. Second, we find some suggestion of ethnic entrepreneurial spirit. Turks are 70 per cent more likely to be self‐employed than any other immigrant group, although they do not necessarily earn more. These patterns should be further explored.     

Earning Gaps for Chinese Immigrants in Canada and the United States

This study compares the US and Canada on the gap in earnings between Chinese immigrants and native‐born whites. Canada and the US are arguably more alike than most possible country pairings, yet they differ in significant ways in their approaches to immigration and integration. The primary difference between Canada and the US regarding immigration policy is that Canada selects a larger proportion of economic immigrants – that is, those admitted based on their ability to contribute to the economy – than the US's focus on family reunification. Canadian immigration and multicultural integration policy does not appear to improve Chinese immigrant earnings in the way that might be predicted from Canada's skilled‐based immigrant selection policy and welcoming social context. In spite of a more laissez‐faire approach to immigrant integration and a less skill‐selective immigration policy, we show that Chinese immigrants are earning relatively more in the US than in Canada.     

Ethnic Enclaves,Networks and Self‐Employment among Middle Eastern Immigrants in Sweden

The proportion of immigrants from countries in the Middle East living in Sweden has increased since the 1970s, and it is a well‐known fact that immigrants from the Middle East suffer from low earnings and high rates of unemployment on the Swedish labour market. There are often great hopes that self‐employment will enable immigrants to improve their labour market situation. Further, in Sweden as in many other countries, the question of whether the existence of ethnic enclaves are good or bad for immigrants’ earnings and employment opportunities has also been widely debated. This paper presents a study of the extent to which Middle Eastern ethnic enclaves and networks in Sweden enhance or hinder immigrants’ self‐employment. The results show that the presence of ethnic enclaves increases the propensity for self‐employment. Thus, immigrants in ethnic enclaves provide their co‐ethnics with goods and services that Swedish natives are not able to provide. The results also show that ethnic networks seem to be an obstacle to immigrant self‐employment. One explanation is that an increase in network size implies increased competition for customers among self‐employed immigrants. The question of whether ethnic enclaves are good or bad for the integration of immigrants into the labour market has been widely debated. The results of this paper provide us with information about the integration puzzle. Ethnic enclaves seem to enhance self‐employment propensities among Middle Eastern immigrants in Sweden.     

Decreasing the Recent Immigrant Earnings Gap: The Impact of Canadian Credential Attainment

It is well documented that newly arrived immigrants face a significant earnings gap relative to native‐born workers. One way for new immigrants to improve their relative labour market position upon arrival in a host country is to improve their educational credentials. According to signalling theory, a host‐country credential should provide employers with a proxy for true productivity on the job, leading to higher earnings. Using data from a Canadian longitudinal survey, we employ longitudinal growth‐curve techniques to estimate the effect of receiving a Canadian educational credential on the income growth of racial‐minority recent immigrants compared to native‐born Canadians. The results indicate that the earnings gap between recent immigrants and native‐born Canadians is significantly reduced with the attainment of a Canadian educational credential.     

Self‐Selection and Economic Assimilation of Immigrants: The Case of Iranian Immigrants Arriving to Three Countries During 1979–1985

The study is designed to evaluate the impact of the interaction between patterns of immigrants' self‐selection and the context of reception at destinations on economic assimilation of Iranian immigrants who came to three countries during 1979–1985. For that purpose, we studied immigrants at the age of 22 or higher upon arrival by utilizing the 5 percent 1990 and 2000 Public Use Microdata files (PUMS) of the United States census, the 20 percent demographic samples of the 1983 and 1995 Israeli censuses of population, and the 1990 and 2000 Swedish registers. The results indicate that the “most qualified” immigrants – both on observed and unobserved variables – who left Iran right after the Islamic revolution, arrived in the US Their positive self‐selection led them to reach complete earnings assimilation with natives there. Iranian immigrants who arrived in Israel and Sweden did not achieve full earnings assimilation with natives. Of these two groups, a smaller immigrant‐to‐native gap in average earnings was found in Sweden, but in the same time Iranian immigrants in Israel were more positively self‐selected and showed better assimilation than their counterparts in Sweden. Market structure played a certain role in immigrants' earnings assimilation mainly in Sweden.     

The Economic Assimilation of African Immigrants in the United States

This article examines the puzzle that the earnings of African immigrants do not match their high qualifications in terms of educational attainment. We apply cohort analysis to compare the economic assimilation patterns of black African immigrants with that of black non‐African immigrants. We find results that are consistent with the idea that the lower earnings of African immigrants are due to greater difficulty with skill transferability. Africans face substantially lower earnings at entry than black natives and black non‐African immigrants, although they close a substantial part of the initial earnings gap over time. Moreover, the earnings gap at entry has narrowed for recent cohorts; and Africans who migrate during childhood and those with no college education face no disadvantage. We also find similar patterns of assimilation in labour supply and participation in welfare programmes, which indicate that Africans face greater challenges at entry but assimilate at a faster rate.     

The difference between wages and wage potentials: Earnings disadvantages of immigrants in Germany

Immigrants in Germany have poor earnings performance relative to natives. Claiming that human-capital endowments determine earnings potentials rather than actual earnings, a stochastic earnings frontier is estimated and used to seek systematic differences between natives and migrants for GSOEP data for the year 2000. While empirical results clearly support the frontier assumption, natives and immigrants are surprisingly about the same with respect to the frontier. Assuming a half-normal distribution of the wage gap, on average, both groups transform a modest 84% share of their potential income into market earnings. This implies wage inequality can be attributed to human-capital differentials alone. The human-capital endowments of immigrants are largely determined by the very low percentage who have college degrees, their slow assimilation and zero-return on imported experience. The paper also tries to explain individual wage gaps, which are significantly decreased in married subjects raising families, but increased in employees in small- or medium-sized relative to larger firms. However, these variables only make minor contributions to the variance.     

Self-employed immigrants and their employees: evidence from Swedish employer-employee data

We present a study of the employees of self-employed immigrants with unincorporated firms in Sweden using matched employer-employee data from 2014. Non-European immigrants are more likely than natives to have employees in their firms. Furthermore, immigrants, especially non-European immigrants, are more likely than natives to employ immigrants in their firms, and non-European immigrants are most likely to employ recently arrived non-European immigrants with low education in their firms. Males are more likely than females to have employees in their firms, but self-employed females are more likely than self-employed males to have female employees. This is the case for all immigrant groups as well as for natives. We conclude that self-employed immigrants play a role in the labour market integration process since they create employment opportunities for immigrant groups that have difficulty entering the labour market.

     

The Human Capital Model of Selection and Immigrant Economic Outcomes

This article examines the trends in the economic advantage that highly educated immigrants hold over less educated immigrants in Canada, focusing on the differences between short‐run and longer‐run outcomes. Using data from the Longitudinal Immigration Database covering the period from the 1980s to the 2000s, this study finds that the relative entry earnings advantage that higher education provides to new immigrants has decreased dramatically over the last 30 years. However, university‐educated immigrants had a much steeper earnings trajectory than immigrants with trades or a high school education. The earnings advantage among highly educated immigrants increases significantly with time spent in Canada. This pattern is observed for virtually all immigrant classes and arrival cohorts. The results suggest that short‐run economic outcomes of immigrants are not good predictors of longer‐run results, at least by educational attainment. The implications of these findings for immigration selection policy are discussed in the conclusion.     

The effects of 9/11 on intermarriage between natives and immigrants to the U.S.

The existing literature generally finds a negative impact of the 9/11 tragedy on immigrants?? labor market performance, consistent with increased discrimination in the labor market and stricter immigration policies. In this paper, we examine the impact of this tragic event on a particular measure of immigrants?? social outcomes??marriage with a native or intermarriage. We find that the tragic event actually increases Hispanic immigrants?? probability of being married to a native. We suggest that our results could be explained by that after 9/11, the deteriorated labor market conditions, along with tightened immigration policies, may have led to increased incentives of immigrants to marry natives. This effect is large relative to the potential discrimination effect, if any, that could reduce natives?? willingness to marry an immigrant. We also find that the magnitude of the effect is much smaller in the years immediately following 9/11 and becomes larger over time; and that there exists a large, statistically significant gender difference in the effects of 9/11 on intermarriage outcomes. Finally, we conduct indirect tests of proposed explanations; and our results imply existence of economic gains from intermarriage, and that discrimination may indeed exist.