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

European Union; COVID-19 pandemic; Foreign workers; Migrant labor; Work experience (Employment); Labor market; Job classification

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 the rest of the explained gap. More than half of this gap remains unexplained. Although major employment losses were averted thanks to the massive use of short-time work programs in Europe, migrant workers—particularly extra-EU migrants—suffered from high economic vulnerability during the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of ILR Review is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)