The status of immigrants on Italian labour market in the context of economic decline: Evidence from survey, macroeconomic and big data

Abstract

Considering the impact of economic crisis on Italian labour market, the aim of this paper is to analyse the status of immigrants from Italy in the labour field using more sources of data: survey data from the research “Case study of Labour Force Survey”, macroeconomic data from official statistics of Eurostat and big data associated to Internet queries on Google. Survey analysis for the 20 regions in Italy confirmed the foreign women advantage of finding a job better than foreign men. The decline in the GDP at regional level affected the immigrants, but their searches for jobs on the Internet were significant in explaining the status of immigrants on labour market. The data at national level used in estimating Bayesian generalized ridge regression suggested that the number of unemployed immigrants from Italy since 2008 is explained by changes in risk of poverty or social exclusion, exports of goods and services, housing cost overburden rate, inflation and tax rate on low wage earners and adult participation in learning.