Skilled Migration Policy and the Labour Market Performance of Immigrants

Max Tani

No 11241, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: over-education; labour market; skilled immigration; immigration policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pages
Date: 2017-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-int, nep-lma, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - published in: International Migration Review, 2020, 54 (1), 35-57

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