Being on the Frontline? Immigrant Workers in Europe and the COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT: This article provides the first systematic assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on the labor market for immigrant workers in Europe. The authors estimate that in 2020 extra-EU migrants were twice as likely and EU migrants were 1.6 times as likely to experience employment loss relative to comparable natives. To understand the determinants of these large gaps, the article focuses on three job characteristics—essentiality, temporariness, and teleworkability—and documents that migrants were overrepresented among essential, temporary, and low-teleworkable occupations at the onset of the pandemic. The authors estimate that pre-pandemic occupational sorting accounts for 25 to 35% of the explained migrant–native gap in the risk of employment termination, while sorting into industries accounts for

SUBMITTER: Mazza J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10195694 | biostudies-literature | 2023 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature