Do immigrants shield the locals? Exposure to COVID‐related risks in the European Union

This article investigates the relationship between immigration and the exposure of native workers to health and labor‐market risks arising from the COVID‐19 pandemic in Europe. Using various measures of occupational risks based on European Union labor force survey data, we find that immigrant workers, especially those from lower‐income member countries in Eastern Europe or from outside the EU, face greater exposure than their native‐born peers to both income and health‐shocks related to COVID‐19. We also show that native workers living in regions with a higher concentration of immigrants are less exposed to some of the income and health risks associated with the pandemic. To assess whether this relationship is causal, we use a Bartik‐type shift‐share instrument to control for potential bias and unobservable factors that would lead migrants to self‐select into more vulnerable occupations across regions. The results show that the presence of immigrant workers has a causal effect in reducing the exposure of native workers to various risks by enabling the native‐born workers to move into jobs that could be undertaken from the safety of their homes or with lower face‐to‐face interactions. The effects on the native‐born population are more pronounced for high‐skilled workers than for low‐skilled workers, and for women than for men. We do not find significant effect of immigration on wages and employment—indicating that the effects are mostly driven by a reallocation of natives from less safe jobs to safer jobs.