Do Immigrants Compete with Natives in the Greek Labour Market? Evidence from the Skill-Cell Approach before and during the Great Recession

We attempt to identify the impact of immigration on the labour market opportunities of resident workers by analysing data from the Greek Labour Force Survey (1999–2015) as well as census data for 1981, 1991, and 2001. Slicing the national labour market into education and experience segments, we find modest adverse effects on the employment outcomes of natives and usually insignificant effects on earnings. Our results are generally robust to alternative definitions of skill groups and the potential “downgrading” of immigrants. Importantly, we obtain similar results in qualitative terms when we account for potential endogenous selection into skill-cells, by implementing an instrumental variables approach in the spirit of Card (2001). We also show that veteran immigrants compete more heavily with natives than recent immigrants do. In addition, our analysis indicates that the effects of immigration were economically more important during the Greek crisis. Finally, the evidence supports the idea that migrants push natives towards complementary, non-routine tasks.