Author ORCID Identifier
0000-0002-7488-4414
Document Type
Working Paper
Publication Date
Fall 2021
Keywords
skill downgrading, immigrants, refugees, Germany, labor markets, wages, employment
Abstract
Upon arrival to a new country, many immigrants face job downgrading, a phenomenon describing workers being in jobs below the ones they have based on the skills they possess. Moreover, in the presence of downgrading immigrants receiving lower wage returns to the same skills compared to natives. The level of downgrading could depend on the immigrant type and numerous other factors. This study examines the determinants of skill downgrading among two types of immigrants – refugees and economic immigrants – in the German labor markets between 1984 and 2018. We find that refugees downgrade more than economic immigrants, and this discrepancy between the two groups persists over time. We show that language skill improvements exert a strong influence on subsequent labor market outcomes of both groups.
Recommended Citation
Nikolov, Plamen, Salarpour, L., Titus, D., 2021. Skill Downgrading Among Refugees and Economic Immigrants in Germany: Evidence from the Syrian Refugee Crisis (No. arXiv preprint arXiv:2111.00319). State University of New York (Binghamton), Mimeo, Binghamton, NY.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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