Immigration and vocational training: Evidence from England

Firms have two ways to ensure access to a skilled workforce: they can train their employees to the required level of skill or they can hire workers who are already skilled. Training is costly and an increase in the availability of skilled workers may dissuade firms from providing it. In this paper we study the impact of a large increase in net migration to the UK on workers' participation in vocational training. We use administrative information on publicly-funded workplace training capturing provision of training in nationally-recognised sector-wide general skills. We consider variation in migration inflows across local labour markets using a shift-share IV approach to deal with migrants' endogenous sorting across regions or occupations. Our evidence suggests that higher migration intensity led to a reduction in training participation among workers. But effects are concentrated in types of training that are less valuable and among workers who are less likely to benefit from it (in terms of higher earnings).