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Being on the Frontline? Immigrant Workers in Europe and the COVID-19 Pandemic

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  • Fasani, Francesco
  • Mazza, Jacopo

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.

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  • Fasani, Francesco & Mazza, Jacopo, 2022. "Being on the Frontline? Immigrant Workers in Europe and the COVID-19 Pandemic," CEPR Discussion Papers 15590, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:15590
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    Cited by:

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    2. Tijan L. Bah & Catia Batista & Flore Gubert & David McKenzie, 2021. "How has COVID-19 affected the intention to migrate via the backway to Europe and to a neighboring African country? Survey evidence and a salience experiment in The Gambia," NOVAFRICA Working Paper Series wp2107, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Nova School of Business and Economics, NOVAFRICA.
    3. Pierre Alassaf & Basem Munir El-assaf & Zsigmond Gábor Szalay, 2023. "Worker’s Satisfaction and Intention toward Working from Home—Foreign Non-EU Citizens vs. National Workers’ Approach: Case Study of Central European Countries (Visegrád Group (V4))," Administrative Sciences, MDPI, vol. 13(3), pages 1-22, March.
    4. Senyo Dotsey & Audrey Lumley-Sapanski & Maurizio Ambrosini, 2023. "COVID-19 and (Im)migrant Carers in Italy: The Production of Carer Precarity," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(12), pages 1-18, June.
    5. Florio, Erminia & Kharazi, Aicha, 2022. "Curtailment of Economic Activity and Labor Inequalities," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1166, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    6. Theodoros Fouskas & George Koulierakis & Fotini-Maria Mine & Athanasios Theofilopoulos & Sofia Konstantopoulou & Fabiola Ortega-de-Mora & Dimitrios Georgiadis & Georgia Pantazi, 2022. "Racial and Ethnic Inequalities, Health Disparities and Racism in Times of COVID-19 Pandemic Populism in the EU: Unveiling Anti-Migrant Attitudes, Precarious Living Conditions and Barriers to Integrati," Societies, MDPI, vol. 12(6), pages 1-22, December.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Employment risk; Covid-19; Key occupations;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F22 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Migration
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • J20 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - General

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