The OECD says that immigrants represent a growing share of the labour force in OECD countries, although there are important differences from one country to another. For example, they represent less than 1.5% of the working population in Japan, around 12% in Germany, but 25% in Switzerland and in Australia. A detailed analysis of the situation of immigrants on the labour market shows the spread of immigrant employment to the service sectors in most OECD countries while self-employment among immigrants is growing, in particular in Belgium and the United Kingdom.

Notwithstanding progress in employment of the foreign-born during the last decade, the latter encounter difficulties in most of the receiving countries in integrating into the labour market, as illustrated by a lower rate of employment compared to the native-born and a higher unemployment rate. In the countries of southern Europe and Ireland, as well as non-European OECD countries, this pattern is less apparent, indeed, one observes the opposite.

The report looks in particular at the labour market integration of immigrant women in OECD countries. In most of them, foreign-born women have a lower employment rate compared to the native-born, generally below 60%. Moreover, the gap tends to widen with the level of education. This is partly attributable to problems with the recognition of foreign diplomas and qualifications. Women originating from non-OECD member countries are likely to find themselves in an even worse situation in the majority of countries.

Source: OECD

New data show overall flows progressing by about 15% in countries for which harmonised data are available (see Table I.1), which amounts to over 330,000 persons for the countries concerned taken together. Most of this is attributable to a large increase in the United States and to increases in Australia, Canada, Italy and the United Kingdom. In the United States, attribution of green cards rose by about 240 000 after a decline almost as large in 2003 as a result of constraints introduced following the September 11th attacks. The increase reflected a take-up of an accumulated backlog and a return to normal processing rates. Note that the change shown in the upper panel of Table I.1 does not include the impact of the 2003 regularisation programme in Italy. This witnessed the granting of residence permits to almost 635 000 persons. Such persons tend to show up as inflows in the year in which the regularisation takes place, although the immigrants concerned have generally entered over several years. They have not been included in Table I.1, to avoid distorting the statistics. In the lower half of Table I.1, virtually all of the observed change is accounted for by Spain. This country saw an increase in municipal registrations of foreign nationals of almost 220 000 in 2004, to a total level of close to 650 000.2 This was the first significant increase in registrations since 2001 and preceded the regularisation programme implemented in 2005. Since this programme was announced in the autumn of 2004 and since candidates had to show residence in Spain from at least early August 2004, the announcement of the regularisation itself seems unlikely to have produced this increase.

However, there had been some public speculation about the possibility of a regularisation for some months previously and this may have acted as a drawing card for some potential migrants. Among smaller countries, which can undergo significant changes that have only a marginal effect on the statistics as a whole, Norway and Portugal saw significant increases from 2003 to 2004. Inflows of foreign nationals in these countries increased by 14% and 18% respectively in 2004 compared to 2003. Countries showing significant declines (more than 10%), on the other hand, were Finland, Germany and New Zealand.

The report says that currently and indeed historically as well, persons with tertiary education tend to be overrepresented among international migrants.8 Indeed in most countries, the per cent of immigrants with a tertiary education exceeds the corresponding percentage in the native born population. There are a number of reasons for this. Persons with a tertiary education are more attuned to international labour markets and have a higher likelihood of possessing the means to carry out their plans than do persons with less education.

In addition, returns to tertiary tend to be high in OECD countries, adding a further inducement to move. What is true for persons outside the OECD area, however, tends also to be true for persons moving within the OECD zone, that is, expatriates from an OECD country tend to be very highly educated relative to the population remaining behind (OECD, 2004c).

However, not every OECD country can be a “winner” with regard to intra-OECD movements. Some countries receive more tertiary graduates than depart to other OECD countries, others are in the opposite situation. The “losses”, however, can be compensated for by immigration from non-OECD countries, so that there can be a net gain. Table I.7 summarises the situation for the current immigrant population in OECD countries, which represents the accumulated effect of several decades of population movements. Note, first of all that movements of the highly educated from the rest of the world exceed those from OECD countries (6% versus 4% of all tertiary educated in OECD countries). In addition, only the settlement countries of Australia, Canada and the United States and Luxembourg, Sweden and Switzerland gain significantly from migration of the highly educated within OECD countries. All other countries lose more graduates than they gain or show a small net balance. The picture also does not reflect current movements and policies, because Finland, Ireland and the United Kingdom, for example, who have been attracting persons from other OECD countries in recent years, show strong negative balances. Also showing a negative balance are the Central European countries, Germany, the Netherlands, Mexico, New Zealand and Portugal.

Source: OECD

The most significant development in Ireland concerns the large increase in inflows from the new accession states of the European Union. In addition applications for asylum approximately halved from 2003 to 2004. A number of legislative and policy proposals have been put forward to respond to the new migration developments in Ireland.

Both gross and net migrations into Ireland are their highest levels ever at 70 000 and 53 000 respectively for the year ending April 2005. About three fourths of the inflows consisted of foreign nationals and about 26 000 were from the new accession states. These are estimates based on the Irish labour force survey. However, statistics based on Personal Public Service numbers, which are necessary to work in the Irish Republic, show 80 000 such number issued to persons from the new member states in the 12 months following enlargement. Some numbers may have been issued to persons already in the country and some were obtained fraudulently (estimated to be 10%). On the other hand, it is known labour force surveys tend to undercover recent arrivals, so the true picture may lie somewhere in between.

The large drop in work permits issued and renewed, in general, and in particular to persons from the accession states indicates that nationals of these countries are now playing a more significant role in the supply of foreign labour to the Irish labour market. The strong increase in inflows from these countries was accompanied by a drop in the skill profile of the jobs taken up by persons immigrating fewer managers and professionals, more semiskilled and unskilled workers).

The Employment Permits Bill 2005 is intended to put in place a statutory framework for an active managed economic migration policy. It proposes green cards, an intra-company transfer scheme and revised work permits system. It will enable the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment to limit by regulation the number of work permits that may be granted and provides certain protections for non-nationals in employment.