Refugees on the Labour Market

Petter Wikström, Statistics Sweden
Malin Forsberg, Statistics Sweden
Ann Marie Persson , Statistics Sweden

Refugees on the labour market Foreign-born establishment in the labour market is a key part of the integration, and is important both from a societal perspective and from an individual perspective. Refugees who settle in Sweden is a group of foreign-born who often have no connection to the labour market when they immigrate. In this study, we follow the refugees received in different years and see how long it takes before a proportion of the group work in the Swedish labour market. Statistics Sweden has register information on reason for immigration and time for immigration. Register based labour statistics classify workers, mainly based on data from the Swedish tax agency. The proportion working among the group of refugees increase with the time in Sweden. The first two years, most of the refugees spend in some sort of education or introduction program. Hence, the proportion working is low the first years. The increase in the proportion working is more powerful after the first years. When comparing groups of refugees with different immigration years, one can see that the pattern of the development in the percentage working is equal. However, the level between groups with different immigration years differ and there are different levels for men and women, ages and education levels. Many factors affect the percentage working among the refugee population. The composition of each group matters. The economic situation in the country is of course another important influence on the percentage working.

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 Presented in Session P3. Poster Session Migration, Economics, Environment, Methods, History and Policy