Page 78 - valuing-diversity-guidance-for-labour-market-integration-of-migrants

Valuing diversity: guidance for labour market integration of migrants

The negative values are explained by a combination of relatively liberal
admission policies for low-qualified labour, with a very young age structure of
third-country nationals (Moroccan in Spain and Italy, Brazilian in Portugal), which
dramatically increase the activity rate of immigrants relative to nationals.
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Normally the native-born ( ) have higher employment levels than residents
born outside the EU, while EU-born immigrants follows closely the native
employment rate. Exceptions are the atypical cases such as Cyprus, Malta or the
ex-Soviet countries.
In most other cases, employment levels reflect both better matching of
worker characteristics to vacancies among the nationals and attempts by many
employers to reduce integration costs of employees associated with legalisation,
recognition procedures and human resource management, which may affect the
screening and hiring of candidates.

Figure 16 Employment rates by country of birth: nationals vs third country (%),
2011
90

80
70
60

50
40
30

20
10

0
BE BG ES FR FI IE PL EL DK EU SE HU LX IT NL SI UK LV LT EE AT DE PT SK MT CY CZ
Nationals Third countries
Source: Eurostat, labour force survey, employment rates by country of birth. Online data code
[lfsa_ergacob].

The employment rate of third-country immigrants follows the labour market
conditions of each country (also affecting nationals), but the difference between
the two groups is more significant in some countries. In all the Scandinavian
countries, Belgium and France the difference is above 10%.
There is a smaller share of women employed (50%) in the EU than of men
(68.7%), among the third-country-born. This may reflect three facts: that men
tend to immigrate ahead of women and then face obstacles to family reunification

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( ) Data by citizenship only available for EU citizens.

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