Immigration & unemployment

Does immigration increase unemployment among native workers? Here's research (pdf) by some economists at the OECD:

While no significant long-run impact is found, an increase in the share of immigrants in the labour force is estimated to raise temporarily natives' unemployment, over a period of approximately five to ten years. Anticompetitive product market regulations are found to increase both the magnitude and the persistence of this impact, while more stringent employment protection legislation magnifies its persistence, and a higher average replacement rate of unemployment benefits increases its magnitude....In sum, immigration per se is not a problem for natives' unemployment.

In simple words, the effect of immigration upon natives' jobs is worsened by statism.

Comments

[dearieme]

Temporary = 5 to 10 years. Mind you, if the share of immigrants in the labour force keeps rising for, say, 20 years, then Temporary extends out to 30 years, presumably. Not awfully temporary.

[Zorro]

"In simple words, the effect of immigration upon natives' jobs is worsened by statism."

Isn't everything worsened by statism?

[CP]

Within the 5-10 years range, a lot of the legal immigrants will have been naturalized, which could cloud the data.

Also, on a well-explored tangent, most U.S. citizens are at least third generation immigrants (if not more recent).

[pommygranate]

First generation migrants are invariably harder working and hence take the jobs that the idle 10% of the indigenous population refuses to take.

If we made work more appealing and leeisure less so, perhaps we wouldnt need such huge migration to keep the economy rolling.

However, until then, come on in!

[Katherine]

Trouble is, for those people in, say, the building industry, those 5 - 10 years can make all the difference. Making leisure "less appealing" would just make their lives that much harder.

[jackie]

well what about unemloyment?going out of business and unemployment are big in our country. To many immigrants that can not learn our language

[Maria]

oh my God!

[Marta]

Oh shit this is very very very bad