Chapter 9: Skills and immigration

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Overview and highlights

This chapter compares the skill profiles of immigrant and native-born adults for the countries participating in ALL. First, the significance of immigration in OECD countries is considered. Projections forecast declining population growth and for some countries a net decrease by 2050. Second, the knowledge and skills that immigrants contribute to host countries in terms of their educational attainment are examined. Third, the extent to which educational credentials translate into useable skills of the type measured in ALL for the host country is considered. In comparing the education credentials and observed skills of immigrants, it is apparent that there is an education-skills gap among immigrants. In light of this, the potential role of native versus foreign language status in explaining the education-skills gap is considered briefly. Finally, the chapter concludes by studying some of the labour market outcomes of immigrants.

The highlights of the chapter are as follows:

The continuing shift in immigration policies toward selecting those with higher skills is evident from the data. In all of the countries considered, recent immigrants appear more likely to have completed higher than upper secondary education.

Education credentials, however, do not necessarily translate into functional levels of literacy, numeracy and problem solving skills in the official language(s) of the host country. It is apparent that in some countries there is an education-skills gap among immigrants. While the proportion of immigrants who complete higher than upper secondary education is relatively high, there are much fewer who score at Levels 3 and 4/5.

The results confirm that knowledge of the official language (as measured by the mother tongue of the immigrant) is favourably associated with literacy performance in all countries studied.

The pattern of skill composition of immigrants among countries is mixed.

In Bermuda, recent and established immigrants are highly skilled, outperforming native-born adults in all skill domains.

In Canada and the United States, the average proficiency of immigrants is significantly lower than their native-born counterparts. But recent immigrants tend to perform slightly better than established immigrants.

Norway has a similar pattern to that observed in Canada and the United States except that recent immigrants have, on average, lower scores than established immigrants.

In Switzerland , the distribution of skills among recent immigrants and native-born adults is similar. In contrast, the majority of established immigrants are low skilled with over 60 per cent scoring at Levels 1 and 2 on the prose scale.

The patterns of labour market outcomes for immigrants by skill level among countries are mixed.

In Switzerland , low skilled immigrants are particularly disadvantaged in terms of employment, even compared to low skilled native-born adults, whereas medium to high skilled immigrants do not face a comparable disadvantage.

In Canada, both low and medium to high skilled immigrants are disadvantaged in terms of employment, even compared to low skilled native-born adults.

In the United States, low skilled adults are more likely to be unemployed, regardless of whether adults have immigrated or are native-born.