1. LAMAS Working Group 7-8 December 2015
Agenda Item 3.2 AHM 2014 Evaluation report
40 min

2. Some main points of quality assessment of the module
Overall good response rates
Only a few instances of routing errors
Small target population in some countries
One variable with some technical problems
One variable with a too small target population
Dear colleagues,
The 2014 ad hoc module went pretty well, and we have a long queue of data users who are eagerly waiting for the release of data and published tables.
The data will be used in reports from other directorate generals of the Commission (DG Migration and Home Affairs, DG Research and Innovation, and DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion).
Eurostat will also publish a series of Statistics Explained articles based on data from the module, planned for May
Here you see the short version of the quality assessment from the evaluation report. The main critical issue for the module was that some countries have a very small target population, actually to the extent that we cannot publish the unemployment rate for 1st and / or 2nd generation immigrants for some of them.
On the level of variables, we only have one which suffers from technical comparability problems, and this was not the fault of the countries involved, but rather that they were in a situation that the task force had not considered, and therefore not provided sufficient guidance for. (LANGCOUR)
Also, another one of the variables has such a small target population in practically all countries that it will not be used by us in any analysis (JOBOBST2)

3. Some main findings of the module
Migration happens mostly for family reasons, then for employment reasons
Unemployment rate for immigrants is always at least 50% higher than for nationals
Second generation immigrants are more often worse off than first generation immigrants regarding unemployment
The largest obstacle for immigrants to find a suitable job is the lack of language skills
Here you see some of the main findings from the evaluation report.
Migration is mostly for family reasons, and this was also the case in 2008, the last time this module was run
Not surprisingly, immigrants are worse off on the labour market than natives. This is the case in all countries
What could be more surprising perhaps, is that 2nd generation immigrants are in most countries worse off than 1st generation immigrants, when measured on unemployment. The 1st generation, however, are more often overqualified for their jobs.
When it comes to obstacles to find a suitable job, the most common answer actually is, no particular obstacle. Among those who had an obstacle, lack of language skills is the most important.

4. Population structure (COUNTRYB+COBFATH+COBMOTH)
A quick glance at the target population sizes.
Nationals are defined as respondents born in the country of interview, with also both parents born in the country of interview. 2nd generation has at least one parent born outside the country of interview. Bars shorter than 100% mean missing data or invalid country codes.
As you see, some of the participating countries had to look rather hard to find any migrants at all, as opposed to here in Luxembourg, where it apparently is more difficult to find nationals.
The other notable pattern is that 1st generation immigrants (at least for LFS purposes) outnumber 2nd generation immigrants almost everywhere. This could be a result of the age filter of the LFS.

5. Reason for migration 2008 and 2014
As already mentioned in the opening, the most cited reason for migration both years (2008 and 2014) is family reasons, and it is quite stable over time. Here you have a scatter plot for both years, which then quite obviously only shows countries which participated in both years.
You see nine countries lying on or very close to the theoretical line of no change over time, with only 3 clear outliers (Spain (up), Lithuania (up) , Norway (down))
(% of target population), excluding missing

6. Factor of difference in unemployment rate (nationals as baseline)
So, over to the labour market theme. Here we compare the unemployment rate between the three groups of nationals, 1st and 2nd generation immigrants, with nationals as the base line, and the factor of difference from the nationals on the y-axis. So, as an example, at the far end we see Norway, where 1st generation immigrants are close to 3 and a half times more likely than nationals to be unemployed, and 2nd generation immigrants are about twice as likely as a native to be unemployed.
This does of course not say anything directly about the unemployment rate each group is exposed to, and I am pretty sure I'd prefer to be in the group of 2.8 times the Austrian unemployment rate than 1.4 times the Greek unemployment rate, but it is a reasonable way to measure labour market integration between groups.
In 14 countries the 2nd generation are worse off than the 1st generation. In 7 countries it is the other way around. In the remaining countries it is not possible to find any meaningful difference between the two groups.
BG and RO suppressed partially due to small target populations.

7. Over-qualification for the current job p.p. difference from nationals
Here we have percentage point difference from nationals on self-perceived over-qualification for the current job
Immigrants, overall, are more overqualified than nationals.
Some interesting patterns emerge if you compare this to the differences in unemployment between the groups (previous slide). We saw that on unemployment 1st generation immigrants are mostly better off than 2nd generation immigrants, but if we look at job/skill matching, it is clear that a lot more 1st than 2nd generation immigrants have jobs that they are overqualified for.
Large differences between 1st and 2nd generation immigrants is clearly visible in a majority of the countries

8. Main obstacle to find a suitable job
For the univariate distribution on main obstacle to find a suitable job (Jobobst1) we see that a surprisingly large amount of immigrants say that there is no particular obstacle preventing them from finding a suitable job
(and again, shorter bars indicate missing data)
Among the concrete reasons that are most commonly mentioned, we find lack of language skills on a clear first place.

9. Exchange of views
Some omissions and errors in the Evaluation report – will update before we publish
Generally approval of the proposed tables
Thanks for pointing out the mistakes in the evaluation report, we will update as needed, and have bilateral discussions if needed
For the most part you agreed to our tables for online publications. We have received a few ideas for more tables from you, but after reviewing them we have found that more detailed groupings of citizenship backgrounds, or on economic activity would lead to a lot of empty cells

10. LAMAS is asked to: approve the Evaluation Report
take note of the tables to be published online
So, per LAMAS tradition, we ask for your approval of the evaluation report, and that you take note of the tables we plan to publish, and we open the floor for comments, if you have any
Thank you