Job separation rates of immigrants and natives in the UK during the Great Recession

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to assess the probability of job separations of immigrants and natives in the UK before and during the economic crisis of 2008. Design/methodology/approach A mixed proportional hazard duration model with a semi-parametric piecewise constant baseline hazard is used on a data sample of inflows into employment. Findings It is found that the crisis increased the probability of exits to unemployment for all groups, while immigrants from the new countries of the European Union seemed to have the lowest hazard towards unemployment even after controlling for their demographic and labour market characteristics. More specifically, even when we account for the fact that they tend to cluster in jobs that are most vulnerable to the business cycle, they are still less likely to exit dependent employment than natives. However, this migrant group is adversely affected by the crisis the most. Research limitations/implications Possible implications of out-migration of the lower performers are discussed. Originality/value This paper makes use of the panel element of the UK Quarterly Labour Force Survey, and uses duration analysis on the individual level to assess the labour market outcomes of natives and immigrants in the UK

Labour market outcomes and welfare use of international migrants in the UK - an empirical investigation

In this PhD thesis we are investigating topics on international migration and we focus in the case of the UK as a host country. We analyse the implications of restricted and unrestricted migration on the labour market outcomes and the welfare use of the migrants.In the first chapter we estimate the joint decision over the labour market behavior of an individual and her subsequent welfare use, and attempt to explain how this decision is differentiated between natives and immigrants. We incorporate differences in the purchasing power parities of the home countries and the host country to explain how these differences create different incentives between natives and immigrants.In the second chapter we investigate the effects of the economic crisis on the labour market performance of natives and immigrants in the UK. We assess the unemployment durations of EU and non-EU immigrants, and UK natives for the years before and during the economic crisis of 2008. We find that the unemployment duration of the EU immigrants converged to that of the UK natives, while the non-EU immigrants were the ones affected the most. We also find that the high degree of clustering into specific socioeconomic statuses, drove at a significant degree the unemployment duration out-comes for the EU immigrants.In the third chapter we investigate the job separation rates of immigrants and natives for the periods before and during the economic crisis of 2008. We find that the non-EU immigrants had higher separation rates than the natives and that this gap widened even further for the years during the crisis. The A8 immigrants had higher separation rates than the natives mainly due to early attrition from the survey. Exits towards unemployment or underemployment happened at a lower rate for this immigrant group compared to the natives. The two results combined indicate the importance of out-migration when the labour market outcomes of EU migrants are compared to those of the UK natives.<br/