Unequal effects on working time: immigrants’ vulnerability in the German labor market in the early COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

"Do economic shocks increase labor market inequalities between immigrants and natives? The COVID-19 crisis reduced economic activity for almost all social groups, providing a recent case for answering this question. Research tends to focus on employment levels, overlooking potential inequalities in other job characteristics. Workers in Germany have largely kept their jobs, although their working hours were reduced. Using German high-frequency survey data, we analyze whether there was a difference in the reduction of hours for immigrants and immigrants’ descendants (IAD) compared to natives. Since IAD are overrepresented in both heavily affected and essential jobs, we argue that the effects may be heterogeneous across the distribution of the change in hours. As merely comparing averages would ignore this heterogeneity, we employ OLS and quantile treatment effect estimations to analyze working hours changes in the early COVID-19 crisis. Results show that IAD reduced hours more than natives. This effect is particularly pronounced at the lower end of the distribution of the change in working hours. Our findings suggest that IAD experienced economic hardship more often than natives and corroborate earlier findings of increased immigrant-native inequalities in times of crisis. This calls for further investigation of policies aimed at protecting vulnerable groups." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku, © Taylor & Francis) ((en))

Cite article

Tobler, L., Fervers, L., Jacob, M. & Knize, V. (2024): Unequal effects on working time: immigrants’ vulnerability in the German labor market in the early COVID-19 pandemic. In: European Societies, Vol. 26, No. 5, p. 1307-1332. DOI:10.1080/14616696.2024.2308011