Immigration and Employment: Substitute Versus Complementary Labor in Selected African Countries

Arina Viseth

No 2020/149, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: This paper uses census and household survey data on Cameroon, Ghana, and South Africa to examine immigration’s impact in the context of a segmented labor market in Sub-Saharan Africa. We find that immigration affects (i) employment (ii) employment allocation between informal and formal sectors, and (iii) the type of employment within each sector. The direction of the impact depends on the degree of complementarity between immigrants and native workers’ skills. Immigration is found to be productivity-enhancing in the short to near term in countries where, the degree of complementarity between immigrants and native workers’ skill sets is the highest.

Keywords: WP; immigration share; wage employment; native worker; immigration's impact; impact immigration; Immigration; Formal and Informal Sector; Employment; Occupational Choice; Complementary Versus Substitute Skills; Cameroon; Ghana; South Africa; employment rate; supply shock; Migration; Labor markets; Informal employment; Self-employment; Africa; Sub-Saharan Africa; origin country (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30
Date: 2020-07-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-int, nep-iue and nep-mig
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=49610 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2020/149

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().