The unemployment experience of male immigrants in England

Abstract

In this paper the unemployment experience of immigrant men in the English labour market is examined, using 1993–1994 data from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey of the United Kingdom. Hypotheses proposed by Chiswick (1982) are investigated, for both the claimant count and the ILO measures of unemployment, using logistic regression analysis. Our results show that recent white and nonwhite immigrant men experience much higher levels of unemployment than earlier cohorts. For whites, this effect is transitory, whereas for nonwhites unemployment rates adjust more slowly as the duration of stay increases. Immigrant unemployment rates also vary considerably with country of birth.