Immigration, Jobs and Employment Protection: Evidence from Europe before and during the Great Recession

Giovanni Peri and D'Amuri Francesco
Additional contact information
D'Amuri Francesco: Department of Economics, University of California Davis

No 167, Working Papers from University of California, Davis, Department of Economics

Abstract: n this paper we analyze the impact of immigrants on the type and quantity of native jobs. We use data on fifteen Western European countries during the 1996-2010 period. We find that immigrants, by taking manual-routine type of occupations pushed natives towards more "complex" (abstract and communication) jobs. Such positive reallocation occurred while the total number of jobs held by natives was unaffected. This job upgrade was associated in the short run to a 0.6% increase in native wages for a doubling of the immigrants' share. These results are robust to the use of two alternative IV strategies based on past settlement of immigrants across European countries measured alternatively with Census or Labor Force data. The job upgrade slowed, but did not come to a halt, during the Great Recession. We also document the labor market flows behind it: the complexity of jobs offered to new native hires was higher relative to the complexity of lost jobs. Finally, we find evidence that such reallocation was significantly larger in countries with more flexible labor laws and that his tendency was particularly strong for less educated workers.

Keywords: Immigration; Jobs; Task specialization; Employment Protection Laws; Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J24 J31 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47
Date: 2012-06-18
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://repec.dss.ucdavis.edu/files/uhxwop5EZQVbDVfmfXu9DREc/12-15.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Chapter: IMMIGRATION, JOBS, AND EMPLOYMENT PROTECTION: EVIDENCE FROM EUROPE BEFORE AND DURING THE GREAT RECESSION (2016)
Journal Article: IMMIGRATION, JOBS, AND EMPLOYMENT PROTECTION: EVIDENCE FROM EUROPE BEFORE AND DURING THE GREAT RECESSION (2014)
Working Paper: Immigration, jobs and employment protection: evidence from Europe before and during the Great Recession (2012)
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:cda:wpaper:167

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of California, Davis, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Letters and Science IT Services Unit ().