The Labour Market Characteristics and Labour Market Impacts of Immigrants in Ireland

By A. Barrett, A. Bergin, D. Duffy. Social Science Research Network, 2005

171 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The purpose of this paper is twofold. We first produce a labour market profile of non- Irish immigrants who arrived in Ireland in the ten years to 2003. We then go on to use the labour market profile in estimating the impact of immigration (non-Irish) on the Irish labour market. Immigrants are shown to be a highly educated group. However, they are not all employed in occupations that fully reflect their education levels. The model of the labour market that we use to simulate the impact of immigration differentiates between low-skilled and high-skilled labour. This allows us to estimate the impact of immigrants (a) if they were employed at a level fitting their education and (b) if they were employed in occupations below their educational level. Our results show that under scenario (a) immigrants who arrived between 1993 and 2003 increased GNP by between 3.5 and 3.7 per cent, largely by lowering skilled wages by around 6 per cent and increasing Ireland’s competitiveness. Under scenario (b), the increase in GNP is reduced to 3 per cent because the impact on skilled wages is lower. If we assume that immigration is primarily unskilled, the impact on earnings inequality found under (a) and (b) is reversed.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Gender Studies, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/aef742c4b11f9ad8266a61b9aa8f9cfcfe8a21de

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

1. R. Barrell
2. J. Fitzgerald
3. Rebecca Riley
4. Benjamin Elsner

In Gender Studies

1. R. Barrell
2. F. McGinnity
3. J. Fitzgerald
4. Rebecca Riley
5. P. Lunn
6. Benjamin Elsner

In Sociology and Political Science

1. R. Barrell
2. F. McGinnity
3. J. Fitzgerald
4. Rebecca Riley
5. P. Lunn
6. Benjamin Elsner

Citations in the corpus

• Immigrant over-education: evidence from Denmark (2007, unknown): “The skills of over-educated workers are potentially under-utilised, and therefore, widespread over-education can be costly for the economy at large because human capital resources are inefficiently allocated leading to lower economic growth (e.g. Barrett et al. 2006 ).”
• Measuring discrimination facing ethnic minority job applicants: an Irish experiment (2011, background): “In Becker’s (1971) ‘taste for discrimination’ theory, he argues that some individuals, be they employers, co-workers or customers, have a ‘taste for discrimination’, while some are indifferent to race.”
• EU Enlargement and Migration: Assessing the Macroeconomic Impacts (2010, background): “The studies by Barrett et al. (2006) and Barrett and McCarthy (2007) suggest that migrants in Ireland (particularly from non-English-speaking countries) tend to be employed in occupations that are not commensurate to their skill levels.”
• Immigrants in a Booming Economy: Analysing Their Earnings and Welfare Dependence (2007, unknown): “This finding is in line with Barrett et al (2006) and so shows”