The Effect of the 2004 and 2007 EU Enlargement on the Spanish Labour Market

The 2004 and 2007 EU enlargement has led to a significant increase in the immigration flow to Spain. Individuals from the new-EU-12 countries accounted for no more than 10% of the whole Spanish immigrant population in 2004, but by 2008 they accounted for almost 20% of the total flow of immigrants. As of 2008, immigrants from Bulgaria, Poland and Rumania account for 97 percent of new-EU-12 immigrants. These immigrants are younger, and the vast majority of them are educated to secondary level. Their employment rate is higher than that of natives, but they are hit harder by unemployment than natives. Our results point to two conclusions from a policy prospective: first, the EU enlargement has significantly improved legal immigration from new-EU-12 countries. Second, the lack of employment assimilation in terms of job quality for workers from the new-EU-12 countries may discourage the entrance of highly qualified workers. The Spanish authorities should provide on-the-job training for these qualified workers so that they can find adequate job prospects in Spain and decide to stay.assimilation, immigration, EU enlargement

Economic and Cultural Gaps among Foreign-born Minorities in Spain

This paper compares the economic and cultural gaps of the largest foreign-born ethnic minorities in Spain: Latinos, Eastern Europeans, Moroccans and individuals from Other Muslim countries. We focus on several outcomes: the gender education gap, early marriage, inter-ethnic marriage, fertility, female employment, command of Spanish, and social participation. Our results suggest that Latinos are the group with patterns of behavior closest to those of natives, followed by Eastern Europeans. In several dimensions, such as the marriage penalty for females, Moroccans and individuals from Other Muslim countries are the groups with larger gaps relative to natives. Our results also show large improvements in the educational attainment of younger Moroccan cohorts, which is an important determinant of the outcomes we have analyzed.immigration, cultural gaps, ethnicity, assimilation

Complements or substitutes? Immigrant and native task specialization in Spain

Learning about the impact that immigration has on the labor market of the receiving nation is a topic of major concern, particularly in Spain, where immigration has more than doubled from 4 percent to roughly 10 percent of the population within a decade. Yet, very little is known about the impact that large immigrant inflows have had on the labor market outcomes of Spanish natives. Furthermore, most studies assume that natives and immigrants are perfect substitutes within skill groups –a questionable assumption given recent findings in the literature. In this paper, we first document that foreign-born workers are not perfect substitutes of similarly skilled native Spanish workers, which may help explain why immigration has not significantly lowered natives’ wages. Instead, immigration has affected the occupational distribution of natives. Specifically, owing to the comparative advantage of foreign-born workers in manual as opposed to interactive tasks, natives relocated to occupations with a lower content of manual tasks –such as technical and alike professional occupations, clerical support jobs, and sales and service occupations. Yet, possibly owing to the significant and simultaneous reduction in the manual to interactive task supply resulting from the increase in the share of native female workers, the increase in the relative supply of manual to interactive tasks from foreign-born workers does not appear to have significantly changed the overall manual to interactive task supply in the Spanish economy

The Timing of Work and Work-Family Conflicts in Spain: Who Has a Split Work Schedule and Why?

Spain, as other south-Mediterranean countries, is characterized for the predominance of split work schedules. Split work schedules typically consist of 5 hours of work in the morning (typically from 9 am to 2 pm), followed by a 2 hour break and another 3 hours of work in the afternoon/evening (typically from 4 pm to 7 pm). Because of the evening work hours, split work schedules are contributing to work-family conflicts in the midst of significantly higher female labor force participation. Our purpose is to examine who has a split work schedule and why. We focus on full-time working women with full-time working partners, for whom the need to reconcile work and family responsibilities is likely to be more pressing. We first find that women with partners with a split work schedule or without children (less than 20 percent our sample) are more likely to have a split work schedule. Yet, despite the revealed preference for a continuous work schedule of the remaining women in our sample, we fail to find evidence of a compensating wage differential for having a split work schedule. We thus examine why and find that younger and less educated women more likely to be constrained in their job choices are more likely to work in the private sector, where split work schedules are primarily found.work-family conflicts, timing of work, split/continuous time schedule, compensating wage differentials, job constraints

Immigrants’ Responsiveness to Labor Market Conditions and Their Impact on Regional Employment Disparities: Evidence from Spain

Using data from the Spanish Labor Force Survey (Encuesta de Población Activa) from 1999 through 2007, we explore the role of employment opportunities in explaining the growing immigrant flows of recent years. Subsequently, we investigate whether immigrant inflows have helped reduce regional employment disparities. Our results indicate that immigrants choose to reside in regions with higher employment rates for their particular skills. However, perhaps owing to its recent nature or the ability of the production infrastructure to absorb the increase in immigrant labor, immigration does not seem to have significantly helped employment convergence across regions.

Does Immigration Raise Natives’ Income? National and Regional Evidence from Spain

How immigration affects the labor market of the host country is a topic of major concern for many immigrant-receiving nations. Spain is no exception following the rapid increase in immigrant flows experienced over the past decade. We assess the impact of immigration on Spanish natives’ income by estimating the net immigration surplus accruing at the national level and at high immigrant-receiving regions while taking into account the imperfect substitutability of immigrant and native labor. Specifically, using information on the occupational densities of immigrants and natives of different skill levels, we develop a mapping of immigrant-to-native self-reported skills that reveals the combination of natives across skills that would be equivalent to an immigrant of a given self-reported skill level, which we use to account for any differences between immigrant self-reported skill levels and their effective skills according to the Spanish labor market. We find that the immigrant surplus amounts to 0.04 percent of GDP at the national level and it is even higher for some of the main immigrant-receiving regions, such as Cataluña, Valencia, Madrid, and Murcia.international migration, regional, national, immigration surplus, Spain

Does Immigration Raise Natives’ Income? National and Regional Evidence from Spain

How immigration affects the labor market of the host country is a topic of major concern for many immigrant-receiving nations. Spain is no exception following the rapid increase in immigrant flows experienced over the past decade. We assess the impact of immigration on Spanish natives’ income by estimating the net immigration surplus accruing at the national level and at high immigrant-receiving regions while taking into account the imperfect substitutability of immigrant and native labor. Specifically, using information on the occupational densities of immigrants and natives of different skill levels, we develop a mapping of immigrant-to-native self-reported skills that reveals the combination of natives across skills that would be equivalent to an immigrant of a given self-reported skill level, which we use to account for any differences between immigrant self-reported skill levels and their effective skills according to the Spanish labor market. We find that the immigrant surplus amounts to 0.04 percent of GDP at the national level and it is even higher for some of the main immigrant-receiving regions, such as Cataluña, Valencia, Madrid, and Murcia.international migration, regional, national, immigration surplus, Spain

Immigrants Responsiveness to Labor Market Conditions

Using data from the Spanish Labor Force Survey (Encuesta de Población Activa) from 1999 through 2004, we explore the role of regional employment opportunities in explaining the increasing immigrant flows of recent years despite the limited internal mobility on the part of natives. Subsequently, we investigate the policy question of whether immigration has helped reduced unemployment rate disparities across Spanish regions by attracting immigrant flows to regions offering better employment opportunities. Our results indicate that immigrants choose to reside in regions with larger employment rates and where their probability of finding a job is higher. In particular, and despite some differences depending on their origin, immigrants appear generally more responsive than their native counterparts to a higher likelihood of informal, self, or indefinite employment. More importantly, insofar the vast majority of immigrants locate in regions characterized by higher employment rates, immigration contributes to greasing the wheels of the Spanish labor market by narrowing regional unemployment rate disparities.regional disparities, immigrant location, international migration