Gli immigrati nel mercato del lavoro italiano: uno sguardo all’universo dei lavoratori dipendenti 1995-2015

This paper analyses migrants' employment and their wages pattern in Italy since 1995. We use a unique administrative data from the National Institute for Social Security (INPS) archives covering the universe of Italian workers in the private sector. This source allows to have accurate information on citizenship, a key variable for an analysis on migrants. We explore the evolution of migrants' employment over the last twenty years and we compare it with the native one. We find that migrants are more likely to move across sector and provinces during their career, seemingly because family ties are weaker and homeownership is not a constraint. A further empirical analysis shows that native's wages are positively related with migrant labor supply. A variation around 10% of migrant labor supply induces a 0.1% growth in native' wages. This result together with aforementioned evidence on job mobility could help to explain why migrants job does not substitute native one. If there is an excess of demand in a local labor market migrants are more willing to move and fill that gap.