Mardi | 2017-11-21
Salle des thèses 16h – 17h20

Ahmed TRITAH – Catherine LAFFINEUR – Eva MORENO-GALBIS – Jeremy TANGUY

Over the last two decades, despite similar employment dynamics, immigrants and natives in France have experienced sharp differences in wage changes along the occupational wage distribution. Immigrants’ wage growth has outperformed that of natives along the whole occupational wage distribution. We explain this pattern within a Roy-type wage setting and relate changes in the occupational wage distribution to changes in task-specific skill returns and task specialization choices. We show that immigrants wage growth performance is mostly explained by changes in immigrants’ relative skill endowment, which allows them to move upward the occupational wage ladder. The sources of immigrants’ relative wage performance are heterogeneous depending on the immigrant skill group. Among the least skilled, minimum wage changes over the period are a major determinant. Instead, wage performance of the most skilled immigrants is rather driven by the dynamics of their occupational choices.