The Immigrant Earnings Disadvantage across the Earnings and Skills Distributions: The Case of Immigrants from the EU's New Member States

Seamus McGuinness, Alan Barrett, Martin O'Brien

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    33 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    We analyse the earnings of immigrants from the EU's new member states (NMS) using a large-scale dataset with information on employees in Ireland. We find that the average earnings difference between these immigrants and natives is between 10 and 18 per cent, depending on the controls used. However, the difference is found to be lower for people at the lower end of the earnings distribution. It is also generally lower for people at the lower end of the education distribution. We find mixed evidence on whether unions have an impact on the wages of immigrants from the NMS, although such immigrants appear to suffer a wage penalty as a result of being in firms that provided training to a significant proportion of their workforce.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)457-481
    Number of pages25
    JournalBritish Journal of Industrial Relations
    Volume50
    Issue number3
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Sept 2012

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