Employers' Language Proficiency Requirements and Hiring of Immigrants

Magnus Carlsson, Stefan Eriksson and Dan-Olof Rooth

No 7/2025, SOFI Working Papers in Labour Economics from Stockholm University, Swedish Institute for Social Research

Abstract: Labor markets in advanced economies have undergone substantial change due to globalization, technological improvements, and organizational changes, making language proficiency increasingly important even in less skilled jobs. Has this development led employers to shy away from hiring immigrants with limited host-country language skills? We shed light on this question by conducting a large-scale field experiment, where we introduce common second-language features in immigrants’ resumes. We also conduct employer surveys to interpret our experimental results. Our main finding is that language proficiency has a strong positive effect on being invited to a job interview, even in typical immigrant entry jobs.

Keywords: language proficiency; immigrant hiring; field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J15 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 84 pages
Date: 2025-05-06
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