Looking for the “Best and Brightest": Hiring difficulties and high-skilled foreign workers

Morgan Raux

DEM Discussion Paper Series from Department of Economics at the University of Luxembourg

Abstract: This paper studies the complementarity between domestic and foreign skilled workers. It develops a simple model where employers seek to recruit a foreign worker when finding domestic workers takes more time. This paper confirms the predictions of the model. I rely on a within-firm within-occupation identification strategy to compare recruitment decisions made by a given employer for similar positions that differ in job posting duration. To identify this relationship, I have collected and assembled a new and original dataset at the job level. I match online job postings to administrative data on labor condition applications (LCAs) submitted as the first step in applying for H-1B temporary skilled worker visas. I find that employers are 28 percent more likely to submit an LCA when the job posting duration is one standard deviation longer. I provide evidence suggesting that this phenomenon is due to insufficient domestic labor supply in these occupations.

Keywords: H-1B Work Permit; Hiring difficulties; Web Scraping. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C26 J2 J61 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10993/46235 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Looking for the "Best and Brightest": Hiring difficulties and high-skilled foreign workers (2019)
Working Paper: Looking for the "Best and Brightest": Hiring difficulties and high-skilled foreign workers (2019)
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:luc:wpaper:21-05

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in DEM Discussion Paper Series from Department of Economics at the University of Luxembourg Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Marina Legrand (marina.legrand@uni.lu).