Immigrants’ Wage Performance in a Routine Biased Technological Change Era: France 1994-2012

Eva Moreno-Galbis (1) , Jérémy Tanguy (2) , Ahmed Tritah (3, 4, 5) , Catherine Laffineur (6)

1 AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques
2 IREGE - Institut de Recherche en Gestion et en Economie
3 GAINS - Groupe d'Analyse des Itinéraires et des Niveaux Salariaux
4 IC Migrations - Institut Convergences Migrations [Aubervilliers]
5 CERNA i3 - Centre d'économie industrielle i3
6 GREDEG - Groupe de Recherche en Droit, Economie et Gestion

Over the period 1994–2012, immigrants’ wage growth in France outperformed that of natives. We investigate to what extent changes in task-specific returns to skills contributed to this wage dynamics differential through two channels: changes in the valuation of skills (price effect) and occupational sorting (quantity effect). We find that the wage growth premium of immigrants is mainly explained by the progressive reallocation of immigrants toward tasks whose returns increase over time. Immigrants seem to have taken advantage of labor demand restructuring driven by globalization and technological changes.

Keywords: Wage dynamics; tasks; immigrants; skills

Domains: Economics and Finance

Eva Moreno-Galbis, Jérémy Tanguy, Ahmed Tritah, Catherine Laffineur. Immigrants’ Wage Performance in a Routine Biased Technological Change Era: France 1994-2012. Industrial Relations, 2019, 58 (4), pp.623-673. ⟨10.1111/irel.12245⟩. ⟨hal-02349455⟩