Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP15590
Authors: Francesco Fasani; Jacopo Mazza
Abstract: We provide a first systematic assessment of the labor market impact of COVID-19 on immigrant workers in Europe. In the first year of the pandemic, we estimate that Extra EU migrants were twice as likely to have their job terminated relative to comparable natives, while for EU migrants this probability was 1.6 times larger. To understand the determinants of these large gaps, we focus on three job characteristics: essentiality, temporariness and teleworkability. After documenting differential migrant-native distribution along these three dimensions, we estimate that this pre-pandemic occupational sorting accounts for around 50% of the explained native-migrants gaps in the risk of employment termination; sorting into industries accounts for the other half. Further, we estimate a larger penalty for migrants from being employed in low-teleworkable occupations. Even within narrow occupation/industry cells, however, more than half of the migrant-native gap in job separation probability remains unexplained.
Keywords: employment risk; COVID-19; key occupations
JEL Codes: F22; J61; J20
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| extra EU migrants (F22) | job termination (J63) |
| EU migrants (F22) | job loss (J63) |
| pre-pandemic occupational sorting (J69) | native-migrant gaps in risk of employment termination (J63) |
| sorting into industries (L70) | native-migrant gaps in risk of employment termination (J63) |
| low-teleworkable occupations (J29) | risk of job loss for migrants (J63) |
| unobserved factors (C29) | migrant-native gap in job separation probability (J69) |