Dynamics of employment assimilation

This paper investigates the dynamics of immigrants’ employment assimilation in comparison with the standard static assimilation model. When the effect of past employment experience on current employment possibilities differs between immigrants and natives, then the static assimilation model might produce biased and unrealistic predictions of the relative employment probabilities of immigrants. Using a high-quality panel dataset collected in Sweden and a state-of-the-art non-linear dynamic assimilation model, we find a large employment status persistence that substantially differs between immigrants and native Swedes. We show that failing to control for the differential past labor market experience leads to an incorrect account of the host country-specific human capital that results to a large overestimation (underestimation) of the short-run (long-run) marginal assimilation rates when using the standard static assimilation model. JEL Classification: C33, J15, J61