IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp16219.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Examining the Determinants of Managers' Hiring Attitudes Towards Immigrant Workers: Evidence from an Employer Survey

Author

Listed:
  • Fang, Tony

    (Memorial University of Newfoundland)

  • Zhang, Tingting

    (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

  • Hartley, John

    (Memorial University of Newfoundland)

Abstract

Using a representative survey of 801 employers across Atlantic Canada, we empirically test various factors associated with employer hiring attitudes towards international migrants. Our results indicate that employers who hired international immigrants in the past 12 months exhibited more positive attitudes towards them, consistent with the contact theory. We also find provincial variations in hiring attitudes in that employers in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and PEI had more positive attitudes than those in New Brunswick. In addition, employers in the public sector organizations held more positive perceptions than those in the private sector. Although the coefficients for rural-urban divide and organizational sizes have the expected signs but most of them are statistically insignificant. There are no clear patterns cross industries. Interpretations for our main findings are offered, along with policy and practice implications

Suggested Citation

  • Fang, Tony & Zhang, Tingting & Hartley, John, 2023. "Examining the Determinants of Managers' Hiring Attitudes Towards Immigrant Workers: Evidence from an Employer Survey," IZA Discussion Papers 16219, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16219
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp16219.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stijn Baert & Bart Cockx & Niels Gheyle & Cora Vandamme, 2015. "Is There Less Discrimination in Occupations Where Recruitment Is Difficult?," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 68(3), pages 467-500, May.
    2. Carlsson, Magnus & Rooth, Dan-Olof, 2007. "Evidence of ethnic discrimination in the Swedish labor market using experimental data," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 716-729, August.
    3. Alison L. Booth & Andrew Leigh & Elena Varganova, 2012. "Does Ethnic Discrimination Vary Across Minority Groups? Evidence from a Field Experiment," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 74(4), pages 547-573, August.
    4. Casey Warman & Arthur Sweetman & Gustave Goldmann, 2015. "The Portability of New Immigrants' Human Capital: Language, Education, and Occupational Skills," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 41(s1), pages 64-79, August.
    5. Zschirnt, Eva & Ruedin, Didier, 2016. "Ethnic discrimination in hiring decisions: A meta-analysis of correspondence tests 1990–2015," EconStor Preprints 142176, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    6. Sabina Kubiciel-Lodzinska & Jolanta Maj, 2020. "Experience in Employing Immigrants and the Perception of Benefits of a Diverse Workforce," European Research Studies Journal, European Research Studies Journal, vol. 0(Special 1), pages 803-818.
    7. Olof Åslund & Lena Hensvik & Oskar Nordström Skans, 2014. "Seeking Similarity: How Immigrants and Natives Manage in the Labor Market," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 32(3), pages 405-441.
    8. Per Lundborg, 2013. "Refugees' Employment Integration in Sweden: Cultural Distance and Labor Market Performance," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(2), pages 219-232, May.
    9. Annabella Ansah & Richard E. Mueller, 2021. "Public and Private Sector Earnings of Immigrants and the Canadian-Born: Evidence from the Labour Force Survey," Journal of International Migration and Integration, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 1403-1429, December.
    10. Rich, Judy, 2014. "What Do Field Experiments of Discrimination in Markets Tell Us? A Meta Analysis of Studies Conducted since 2000," IZA Discussion Papers 8584, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    11. Rupa Banerjee & Jeffrey G. Reitz & Phil Oreopoulos, 2018. "Do Large Employers Treat Racial Minorities More Fairly? An Analysis of Canadian Field Experiment Data," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 44(1), pages 1-12, March.
    12. Magnus Carlsson & Dan-Olof Rooth, 2012. "Revealing taste-based discrimination in hiring: a correspondence testing experiment with geographic variation," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(18), pages 1861-1864, December.
    13. Per LUNDBORG & Per SKEDINGER, 2016. "Employer attitudes towards refugee immigrants: Findings from a Swedish survey," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 155(2), pages 315-337, June.
    14. Susumu Imai & Derek Stacey & Casey Warman, 2019. "From engineer to taxi driver? Language proficiency and the occupational skills of immigrants," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 52(3), pages 914-953, August.
    15. Ather H. Akbari & Azad Haider, 2018. "Impact of Immigration on Economic Growth in Canada and in its Smaller Provinces," Journal of International Migration and Integration, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 129-142, February.
    16. Feng Hou & Simon Coulombe, 2010. "Earnings Gaps for Canadian-Born Visible Minorities in the Public and Private Sectors," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 36(1), pages 29-43, March.
    17. Joerg Dietz & Chetan Joshi & Victoria M. Esses & Leah K. Hamilton & Fabrice Gabarrot, 2015. "The skill paradox: explaining and reducing employment discrimination against skilled immigrants," Post-Print hal-01667154, HAL.
    18. Steven Wald & Tony Fang, 2008. "Overeducated Immigrants in the Canadian Labour Market: Evidence from the Workplace and Employee Survey," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 34(4), pages 457-480, December.
    19. Fang, Tony & Samnani, Al-Karim & Novicevic, Milorad M. & Bing, Mark N., 2013. "Liability-of-foreignness effects on job success of immigrant job seekers," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 98-109.
    20. Philip Oreopoulos, 2011. "Why Do Skilled Immigrants Struggle in the Labor Market? A Field Experiment with Thirteen Thousand Resumes," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 148-171, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gaddis, S. Michael, 2018. "An Introduction to Audit Studies in the Social Sciences," SocArXiv e5hfc, Center for Open Science.
    2. Baert, Stijn, 2017. "Hiring Discrimination: An Overview of (Almost) All Correspondence Experiments Since 2005," GLO Discussion Paper Series 61, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    3. David Neumark, 2018. "Experimental Research on Labor Market Discrimination," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(3), pages 799-866, September.
    4. Valfort, Marie-Anne, 2020. "Anti-Muslim discrimination in France: Evidence from a field experiment," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    5. Veit, Susanne & Thijsen, Lex, 2019. "Almost identical but still treated differently: hiring discrimination against foreign-born and domestic-born minorities," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 47(6), pages 1285-1304.
    6. Koopmans, Ruud & Veit, Susanne & Yemane, Ruta, 2019. "Taste or statistics? A correspondence study of ethnic, racial and religious labour market discrimination in Germany," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 42(16), pages 233-252.
    7. Gordon B. Dahl & Matthew Knepper, 2023. "Age Discrimination across the Business Cycle," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 15(4), pages 75-112, November.
    8. Doris Weichselbaumer, 2017. "Discrimination Against Migrant Job Applicants in Austria: An Experimental Study," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 18(2), pages 237-265, May.
    9. David Neumark & Judith Rich, 2019. "Do Field Experiments on Labor and Housing Markets Overstate Discrimination? A Re-examination of the Evidence," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 72(1), pages 223-252, January.
    10. Akhlaq Ahmad, 2020. "Do Equal Qualifications Yield Equal Rewards for Immigrants in the Labour Market?," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 34(5), pages 826-843, October.
    11. Vernby, Kåre & Dancygier, Rafaela, 2018. "Employer discrimination and the immutability of ethnic hierarchies," Working Paper Series 2018:17, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    12. Weichselbaumer, Doris, 2016. "Discrimination against Female Migrants Wearing Headscarves," IZA Discussion Papers 10217, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Rich, Judy, 2014. "What Do Field Experiments of Discrimination in Markets Tell Us? A Meta Analysis of Studies Conducted since 2000," IZA Discussion Papers 8584, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Hannah Van Borm & Louis Lippens & Stijn Baert, 2022. "An Arab, an Asian, and a Black guy walk into a job interview: ethnic stigma in hiring after controlling for social class," Working Papers of Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Ghent University, Belgium 22/1054, Ghent University, Faculty of Economics and Business Administration.
    15. Button, Patrick & Walker, Brigham, 2020. "Employment discrimination against Indigenous Peoples in the United States: Evidence from a field experiment," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    16. Malte Dahl, 2022. "Alike but Different: How Cultural Distinctiveness Shapes Immigrant-Origin Minorities’ Access to the Labour Market," Journal of International Migration and Integration, Springer, vol. 23(4), pages 2269-2287, December.
    17. Weichselbaumer, Doris, 2015. "Discrimination against Migrants in Austria: An Experimental Study," IZA Discussion Papers 9354, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    18. Cahuc, Pierre & Carcillo, Stéphane & Minea, Andreea & Valfort, Marie-Anne, 2019. "When Correspondence Studies Fail to Detect Hiring Discrimination," IZA Discussion Papers 12653, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Anthony Edo & Nicolas Jacquemet & Constantine Yannelis, 2019. "Language skills and homophilous hiring discrimination: Evidence from gender and racially differentiated applications," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 349-376, March.
    20. Mladen Adamovic & Andreas Leibbrandt, 2024. "Is there a glass ceiling for ethnic minorities to enter leadership positions? Evidence from a large-scale field experiment with over 12,000 job applications," Monash Economics Working Papers 2024-06, Monash University, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    international immigrants; labour and skill shortages; employer hiring attitudes; employer survey; Atlantic Canada;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
    • J63 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Turnover; Vacancies; Layoffs
    • J68 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Public Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp16219. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.