Essays on Immigrants and the Labor Market
Abstract
This dissertation discusses different economic aspects of immigrants’ integration into the labor market. The first essay describes the recent literature on the causal effects of integration and active labor market policies on immigrants’ employment. The primary outcome of interest is employment. Well-executed integration measures can improve immigrants’ attachment to the labor market, speed up the process of entering employment, and improve the quality of attained jobs.
The second essay focuses on periodic interviews of unemployed job seekers. The interviews combine job search assistance and monitoring of job search. The essay studies the effects on unemployed immigrants’ exits from unemployment following an increase in the frequency at which public employment offices in Finland interviewed unemployed job seekers. The reform pushed immigrant job seekers out of the labor force. It did not increase unemployed immigrants’ transitions to employment, education, or active labor market programs.
The third essay discusses the possible trade-off between equity and efficiency in hiring decisions when recruiters use an anonymous hiring policy. It studies a pilot program in which hiring for some, but not all, job titles was subject to anonymization. Foreign-named applicants were more likely to be hired without detrimental effects on job turnover or wages. Announcing anonymization increased job applications.
The final essay discusses labor market testing (LMT) which requires firms to prove there are no local workers available before hiring an immigrant. The study examines the effect of removing LMT requirements. Removing the LMT requirement increased the inflow of non-EU workers to treated occupation-region units, and the effect was mainly driven by individuals already in Finland. There was a negative earnings effect for native workers, especially in low-wage and service-oriented occupations and among older workers.
Publication Information
Kiviholma, S. (2025), Essays on immigrants and the labor market, University of Jyväskylä, JYU Dissertations 969.
- ISSN: 2489-9003
- ISBN: 978-951-39-0958-2 (Online)
