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How Middle-Skilled Workers Adjust to Immigration: The Role of Occupational Skill Specificity

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  • Damiano Pregaldini
  • Uschi Backes-Gellner

Abstract

Our study explores the effects of immigration on the employment of native middle-skilled workers, focusing on how this effect varies with the specificity of their occupational skill bundles. Exploiting the 2002 opening of the Swiss labor market to EU workers and using register data on the location and occupation of these workers, our findings provide novel results on the labor market effects of immigration. We show that the inflow of EU workers led to an increase in the employment of native middle-skilled workers with highly specific occupational skills. This finding could be attributed to immigrant workers reducing existing skill gaps, enhancing the quality of job-worker matches, and alleviating firms' capacity restrictions. This allowed firms to create new jobs, thereby providing increased employment options for middle-skilled workers with highly specialized skills. Previous literature has predominantly highlighted the disadvantages of specific occupational skills compared to general skills in the context of labor market shocks. However, our findings reveal that workers with specific occupational skills can benefit from an immigration-driven labour market shock. These results suggest that policy conclusions regarding the role of specific occupational skills should be more nuanced.

Suggested Citation

  • Damiano Pregaldini & Uschi Backes-Gellner, 2021. "How Middle-Skilled Workers Adjust to Immigration: The Role of Occupational Skill Specificity," Economics of Education Working Paper Series 0193, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).
  • Handle: RePEc:iso:educat:0193
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    Cited by:

    1. Uschi Backes-Gellner & Patrick Lehnert, 2022. "Apprenticeships," Economics of Education Working Paper Series 0194, University of Zurich, Department of Business Administration (IBW).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    migration; cross-border workers; occupational skill specificity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J62 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Job, Occupational and Intergenerational Mobility; Promotion

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