Integrating Immigrants into the Nordic Labour Markets: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic

Combatting long-term unemployment among immigrants beyond the COVID-19 pandemic

“…In some sectors, such as health care, information and communication and electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply, the number of jobs increased during the first pandemic year 2020. This often benefitted immigrants who found work in these sectors (Sánchez Gassen and Penje 2021). Recent studies also found that the employment rates for some immigrant groups increased between 2019 and 2020, for example among foreign-born women in Denmark and Finland, and among immigrants from Africa and Asia in Sweden (Sánchez Gassen and Penje 2021, Andersson and Wadensjö 2022).…”

“…(Figure 6, panel b). One reason for this rapid increase was that many immigrants worked in the accommodation and restaurant industry as well as in other types of service sector jobs, which were strongly affected by COVID-19 restrictions (Jokinen and Norlén 2022, Sánchez Gassen and Penje 2021, Kaihovaara, project interview, 2021, Winstén, project interview, 2022. In addition, many immigrants live in the capital region of Finland where unemployment rose more strongly than in other parts of the country (Kaihovaara, project interview, 2021).…”

“…The unemployment rates for foreign born were already higher than those of their native-born peers before the pandemic but rose even further in 2020 (Hansen, Sørensen andAndersen 2021, Sánchez Gassen andPenje 2021). Particularly in Sweden and Iceland their unemployment rates increased strongly, during the first parts of the pandemic (Figure 1, panel a).…”

Employers’ perspectives on hiring immigrants

“…Research shows that it is dif icult for refugees and migrants to ind jobs, especially for lower-skilled, non-EU-born and refugee women (Calmfors & Sánchez Gassen, 2019). The employment gaps (see Figure 1) between native-born individuals and those from outside the EU have been relatively large across all of the Nordic countries (especially Sweden), and these gaps widened further during the COVID-19 pandemic (Sánchez Gassen et al, 2021). A prevailing challenge in all of the Nordic countries today is labour market mismatch in other words, the skills and prior labour market experiences of immigrants often do not align with those sought by Nordic employers (Barth & Zalkat, 2022).…”