Stockholm university

Research project Newly arrived refugees’ labor market integration

A study of measures in the establishment mission and how these affect employers’ recruitment decisions. The integration of refugees into the regular labor market takes a very long time. After eight years in Sweden, only about half are employed. The objective of the project is to study refugees' path towards employment the first years after arrival.

Woman standing beside wooden boards drying after wood gluing at the joinery or carpentry
Photo: Elmar Gubisch

The focus is on the matching between refugees and recruiting employers, with a particular focus on the employers. We study how employers assess the value of various activities: validation, education in Swedish, other education and subsidized employment. We send out fictitious job applications, designed to be identical except that some applicants signal that they have participated in a particular activity. Then we observe which applicants the employers choose. With this method, the effects on employers’ recruitment decisions of various integration measures can be reliably measured. We complement this with employer interviews. The knowledge provided by the project is expected to improve the match between refugee immigrants and employers.

Project members

Project managers

Dan-Olof Rooth

Professor

Swedish Institute for Social Research
Dan-Olof Rooth

Members

Magnus Carlsson

Researcher

Department of Economics and Statistics, Linnaeus University

Stefan Eriksson

Researcher

Department of Economics, Uppsala University