Immigration and labour market flows

Abstract

[eng] We document facts about unemployment rates and labour market transitions of native and immigrant workers and examine their differences. The question of how immigrants’ labour market performance in the host country compares to that of natives has received considerable research attention, described below. However, most studies focus on particular countries and specific labour market outcomes, such as unemployment and non-employment rates, or the incidence of job loss. We provide a comprehensive analysis of labour market transition rates of immigrants and natives using microdata for France, Spain, and the United States. We use these three countries because they are large countries with a sizeable immigrant population. Moreover, since they have different labour market institutions, types of migration, and legislation we can investigate whether there are common facts about differences between immigrants and natives, or whether they are country-specific and cannot be generalized.