Job Loss and Immigrant Labour Market Performance

Abstract

While integration policies typically focus on labour market entry, we present evidence showing that immigrants from low-income countries tend to have more precarious jobs, and face more severe consequences of job loss, than natives. For immigrant workers in the Norwegian private sector, the probability of job loss in the near future is more than twice that of native workers. Using corporate bankruptcy filings for identification, we find that the adverse effects of job loss on future employment and earnings are twice as large for immigrant employees from low-income source countries.