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

41 Pages Posted: 28 Dec 2020

See all articles by Francesco Fasani

Francesco Fasani

Queen Mary, University of London

Jacopo Mazza

University of Amsterdam

Abstract

We provide a first timely assessment of the pandemic crisis impact on the labour market prospects of immigrant workers in Europe by proposing a novel measure of their exposure to employment risk. We characterize migrants' occupations along four dimensions related to the role of workers' occupations in the response to the pandemic, the contractual protection they enjoy, the possibility of performing their job from home and the resilience of the industry in which they are employed. We show that our measure of employment risk closely predicts actual employment losses observed in European countries after the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We estimate that, within industries and occupations, Extra-EU migrants and women are exposed to higher risk of unemployment than native men and that women are losing jobs at higher rates than equally exposed men. According to our estimates, more than 9 million immigrants in the EU14+UK area are exposed to a high risk of becoming unemployed due to the pandemic crisis, 1.3 million of which are facing a very high risk.

JEL Classification: F22, J61, J20

Suggested Citation

Fasani, Francesco and Mazza, Jacopo, Being on the Frontline? Immigrant Workers in Europe and the Covid-19 Pandemic. IZA Discussion Paper No. 13963, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3755380 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3755380

Francesco Fasani (Contact Author)

Queen Mary, University of London ( email )

Jacopo Mazza

University of Amsterdam ( email )

Spui 21
Amsterdam, 1018 WB
Netherlands

Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?

Paper statistics

Downloads
74
Abstract Views
545
Rank
655,200
PlumX Metrics