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Abstract
Using data from the Household Poverty Surveys in 2003 and 2010, this paper analyses characteristics of immigrants in The Gambian labour market. The analysis indicates that immigrants are relatively young, low-skilled (though with skill levels comparable to Gambians) and mainly come from neighbouring West African countries. While immigrants on average earn more than Gambians, this labour market advantage varies significantly depending on workers’ skill level. For instance, unskilled immigrants have a wage advantage but such an advantage does not exist among the skilled immigrants. Given that The Gambia is a country with high skilled emigration rates, these and other findings in this paper have important policy implications.
Notes
1. For a comprehensive survey of the literature on the labour market impact of immigration, see Okkerse (Citation2008).
2. These lower and upper age limits correspond to the ILO’s usual definition of the working age population.
3. In 2010, one US dollar was equivalent to 28 dalasis (World Bank, Citation2013). The monthly wage was USD 84.96 in 2003 and USD 110.71 in 2010.
4. Unemployment rate is defined as the percentage of the labour force (the sum of the employed and unemployed adults) currently not working but looking for a job and available to start work immediately. The unemployed are defined as adults who have no current employment but have been looking for work over the preceding 30 days.
5. This figure is significantly less than the value in the World Bank (Citation2013), which is 78%.
6. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (http://www.iwpr.org/), this is a global phenomenon. The average gender wage gap was 23.5% for full-time workers in 2012.
7. We define a migrant as any individual who indicated in the survey that he/she is not a Gambian citizen. They could be short-term or long-term migrants, but this distinction was not available in the data-set.
8. A more detailed breakdown of occupational activities by both immigrants and Gambian nationals is provided in Appendix 1.
9. The sample sizes for Mali, Mauritania and Guinea Bissau are quite small, so this average should be interpreted with caution.
10. The English literacy variable is not available for the 2003 survey. So Column 5 is estimated only with 2010 data-set.
11. In reality, given the presence of internal migration among Gambians, average rural wage always lags that of the average urban wage.
12. We do acknowledge that The Gambia benefits significantly from remittances sent by emigrants. Whether the benefits of these emigrants out-weigh the loss of skills is an issue beyond the scope of this paper.