Suchergebnisse

Following Venezuela's economic collapse, millions have fled the country. This article assesses the impact of the migration wave on the labor market outcomes of migrants and nonmigrants in Colombia, the major recipient of Venezuelan refugees and migrants. We address potential endogeneity problems in the estimation using a Bartik-type instrumental variable approach that exploits the regional variation of migrant networks and the timing and intensity of the Venezuelan economic crisis. While the migration flows increase unemployment in Colombia among migrants, they have no significant effect on nonmigrants' unemployment. In fact, migration significantly reduces the labor participation of nonmigrants, offsetting its negative impact on employment. Employment losses among nonmigrants are mostly driven by self-employed workers and are consistently larger for female, young, and low-skill individuals. While returned migrants are overall unaffected, the negative impact of migration on migrants' employment is mostly driven by international migrants. The massive arrival of migrants from Venezuela also affects internal migrants' labor outcomes and changes the internal migration flows. These findings shed light on the labor market effects of migration flows between developing countries, a common phenomenon that has received relatively little attention in the specialized literature.

AbstractWe assess the effect of the COVID‐19 pandemic and particularly the sector‐specific mobility restrictions on the Colombian labour market. We exploit the sectoral and temporal variation of the restriction policies to identify their effect. Mobility restrictions significantly reduced employment, accounting for approximately a quarter of the total job loss between February and April of 2020. The remaining three quarters of the job losses could be attributed to the disease's regional patterns and other epidemiological and economic factors affecting the whole country. Therefore, we should expect important employment losses even in the absence of such restrictions. We also assess the effect of restrictions on the intensive margin, finding negative, although smaller effects on the number of hours worked and wages. Most of the employment effect is driven by salaried workers, while self‐employment was more responsive to the disease spread. Finally, we find that women are disproportionally affected: mobility restrictions account for a third of the recent increase of the gender gap in salaried employment.

En este trabajo evaluamos el efecto de la pandemia de Covid-19 y las restricciones de movilidad sectoriales implementadas para reducir la velocidad del contagio. Para identificar el efecto de estas políticas, explotamos la variación en el empleo y salarios en los sectores excluidos y no excluidos de las restricciones a la movilidad, así como el momento de su implementación. Las restricciones sectoriales a la movilidad tienen efectos negativos en el empleo, representando aproximadamente una cuarta parte de la pérdida total de empleo entre febrero y abril de 2020. Los patrones regionales de propagación de la enfermedad y otros componentes epidemiológicos y económicos, que afectaron al país durante este período, representan las tres cuartas partes restantes de la pérdida de empleos. Por lo tanto, debemos esperar importantes pérdidas de empleo incluso en ausencia de dichas restricciones. No encontramos un efecto significativo en el promedio de horas trabajadas o los salarios, lo que indica que la mayor parte del ajuste del mercado laboral tuvo lugar en el margen extensivo. Además, las restricciones a la movilidad sectoriales afectan principalmente a los trabajadores asalariados, mientras que el trabajo por cuenta propia responde principalmente a la propagación de la enfermedad. ; We assess the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdown of some economic sectors on the Colombian labor market. We exploit the variation between excluded and non-excluded sectors from the lockdown, as well as the timing of the restriction policies, to identify the effect of sector-specific restriction policies. These restrictions had negative effects on employment, accounting for approximately a quarter of the total job loss between February and April of 2020; the remaining three quarters of the job losses can be attributed to the regional patterns of the disease spread, and other epidemiological and economic factors affecting the whole country during this period. Therefore, we should expect important employment losses even in the absence of such restrictions. In contrast, we find no significant effect of sector-specific restrictions on average worked hours or wages, indicating that most of the adjustment of the labor market took place in the extensive margin. Moreover, sector-specific restrictions only affect salaried workers, while self-employment is more responsive to the disease spread.