Do Immigrants Take The Jobs Of Native Workers?

In this paper, the authors focus on the short-run adjustments taking place at the workplace level when immigrants are employed. Specifically, they analyze whether individual native workers are replaced or displaced by the employment of immigrants within the same narrowly defined occupations at the workplace. For this purpose, they estimate a competing risks duration model for job spells of native workers that distinguishes between job-to-job and job-to-unemployment transitions. In general, they do not find any signs of native workers being displaced by immigrants. Furthermore, they find only very limited signs of replacement of native workers by immigrants. Instead, in particular low-skilled native workers are less likely to lose or leave their jobs when the firms hire immigrants.