Job autonomy and education-skill matches of immigrant workers in Germany

ABSTRACT

This letter examines the determinants of occupational autonomy and education-skill matches of immigrant workers in Germany. Their jobs are characterized by much lower autonomy than those of comparable natives and the immigrant penalty decreases only minimally over time. In contrast to wages, the difference between immigrants from advanced and non-advanced countries is small. But immigrants from advanced countries are much more likely to have a job matching their qualification. The probability of a match does not increase over time for highly educated immigrants, but does for others. Highly educated immigrant women have an additional disadvantage. In some industries low autonomy and skill downgrading of immigrant workers are particularly common.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration
• Germany
• labour market
• skills

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• E24
• F22
• J15
• J61

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Examples include Brücker and Jahn (2011), Glitz (2012), Bertoli, Brücker, and Moraga (2016), Moreno-Galbis and Tritah (2016), and Basilio, Bauer, and Kramer (2017).

² While the level of responsibility is important for the autonomy, other characteristics matter as well. The variable consolidates information on task descriptions, the kind of activities involved, flexibility, use of professional knowledge, level of responsibility, required training, and company size. For more information about this variable and how it compares international job classifications see Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik and Geis (2003), DIW (2014), and Beyer (2018).

³ Countries are grouped in advanced and non-advanced based on IMF classification.

⁴ Controls are reported below the regression tables.

⁵ This result is not due to multicollinearity of the explanatory variables: correlation between these variables is not very high and consequently signs and significant levels do not change when potentially problematic variables are excluded.