Language Skills and Labor Market Outcomes of Immigrants in Europe

Abdurrahman Aydemir and Ahmet Girisken ()
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Ahmet Girisken: Stockholm School of Economics

No 18421, IZA Discussion Papers from IZA Network @ LISER

Abstract: This paper studies the causal impact of language skills on human capital accumulation, labor market outcomes, and job characteristics of childhood immigrants across European countries. Using PIAAC data, we adopt an instrumental variable strategy based on the critical age hypothesis and linguistic distance. Our IV results show that higher language proficiency boosts human capital accumulation through formal schooling and actual labor market experience, resulting in improved labor market outcomes in terms of earnings and hours of work. Language proficiency also affects job tasks, increasing employment of reading and abstract tasks while decreasing physical work, and reduces education-job mismatch. These results indicate that language proficiency plays a significant role in enhancing productivity of immigrants in the European context.

Keywords: immigration; language proficiency; labor market; job tasks; PIAAC (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J15 J24 J31 J32 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-lab and nep-lma
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