Seminar «Trainspotting. Good Jobs, Training & Immigration»

IZA-HSE University International Labor Seminar was held on October 27, 2020.

Speaker: Jonathan Wadsworth (University of London, London School of Economics and IZA).

Title: Trainspotting. Good Jobs, Training & Immigration.

While skilled immigration ceteris provides an immediate boost to GDP per capita by adding to the human capital stock of the receiving economy, might it also reduce the number of ’good jobs’, i.e. those with training, available to indigenous workers? This paper analyses this issue theoretically and empirically. The theoretical model shows how skilled immigration may affect the sectoral allocation of labour and how it may have a positive or negative effect on the training and social mobility of native born workers. The empirical analysis uses UK data from 2001 to 2018 to show that training rates of UK born workers have declined in a period where immigration has been rising strongly, and have declined significantly more in high wage non-traded sectors. At the sectoral level, this link is much less strong but there is evidence of different effects of skilled immigration across traded and non-traded sectors and evidence that the hiring of UK born workers in high wage non-traded sectors has been negatively affected by skilled immigration. Joint work with Andrew Mountford.

Mountford A., Wadsworth J. Trainspotting: "Good Jobs", Training and Skilled Immigration. IZA Discussion Paper No. 12409

Discussant: Alexander M. Danzer (KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt and IZA).