The Impact of Ireland’s Recession on the Labour Market Outcomes of its Immigrants

Abstract

In the mid 2000s Ireland experienced a large inflow of immigrants, partly in response to strong economic growth but also in response to its decision to allow full access to its labour market when EU expansion occurred in May 2004. Between 2004, the proportion of non-nationals living in Ireland almost doubled, increasing from 7.7 to 13.1 percent. Between 2008 and 2009, Ireland experienced one of the most acute downturns in economic activity in the industrialised world, with a cumulative fall in Gross National Product of close to 14 percent. In this paper, we assess how this downturn has impacted upon the employment outcomes of nonnationals relative to natives. We find huge job losses among immigrants, with an annual rate of job loss of close to 20 percent in 2009, compared to 7 percent for natives. A higher rate of job loss for immigrants is found to remain when we control for factors such as age and education. We also show how an outflow of nonnationals is occurring. The findings have many implications. In particular, the results point to economic vulnerability for immigrants. However, they also point to a potential macroeconomic benefit to Ireland in terms of a flexible labour supply adjustment.

Returning Home at Times of Trouble? Return Migration of EU Enlargement Migrants During the Crisis

“…Deterioration of the Irish economy and a sharp increase in unemployment during the crisis has mostly affected industries and sectors with large concentrations of migrants from the new member states (NMS), such as construction, agriculture, wholesale and retail trade (see among others Barrett and Kelly, 2012;Papademetriou et al, 2010;Koehler et al, 2010 for the analysis of the Irish situation). Consequently, migrants from the new EU countries have experienced the largest increase in unemployment.…”

The labor market in Ireland, 2000–2016

“…Migrants were also severely affected by the crisis. A study from 2012 shows that employment among immigrants fell by 20% between 2008 and 2009, compared with 7% for natives [8]. The study also finds that this was not just a construction-industry effect; job losses were relatively higher for immigrants across most sectors.…”

“…Previous work of the authors contains a larger number of background references for the material presented here and has been used intensively in all major parts of this article [4], [5], [7], [8].…”

How did Immigrants fare in the Irish Labour Market over the Great Recession?

“…This is particularly relevant for Ireland, where some ethnic groups and nationalities face particular difficulties to access the labour market (Kingston et al, 2010, McGinnity et al, 2014. Male immigrants coming from Central and Eastern EU countries have also been found to be particularly affected, being less likely to be employed compared to their Irish counterparts and also compared to their female compatriots (Barrett and Kelly, 2012).…”

“…Their numbers declined during the Recession but recovered slightly in 2014. The single largest group of non-nationals is from the EU-New Member States (EU- [See Table 1] Using data from the Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS) longitudinal dataset, this paper builds on earlier work by Barrett and Kelly (2012) and McGinnity et al, (2014) to examine the labour market impact of the recession on immigrants relative to natives' pre, during and as the Irish economy has recovered from the downturn. In particularly, we investigate the impact that the recession has had on both groups'…”