6.13 Foreign labor and population in OECD countries See Table 6.13 here

Commentary
About the data
Definitions
Data sources

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Today at least 125 million people live outside their country of origin. Each year 2–3 million new migrants—legal and illegal—leave developing countries. About half go to industrial countries. The foreign population in OECD countries has reached more than 60 million (legal), and the share of immigrants originating in developing countries is increasing.

In Australia, Canada, and the United States inflows from developing countries have risen slowly, reaching about 900,000 a year by 1993. In Western Europe a period of large-scale labor migration due to labor shortages in such countries as Germany and Switzerland was followed by a period of restricted migration after the oil shock of 1976, as the fear of recession induced return migration. A dip in the growth of the foreign population in the late 1970s and early 1980s was soon followed by a rise—to about 180,000 a year (Zimmermann 1995).

Today population growth in OECD countries is being driven by an increase in net migration and the natural increase of the population (excess of births over deaths), fostered by higher fertility rates among immigrants. Since 1987 more than 60 percent of the population increase in Western Europe has been due to migration. In North America migration accounted for about a quarter of the increase between 1982 and 1991.

International labor often benefits both the home country of the migrant, which receives remittances that boost the country’s foreign exchange earnings, and the host country, which receives productive and less expensive labor. Remittances can be as much as 25–50 percent of export revenues, as in Bangladesh, Egypt, Greece, Pakistan, and Turkey. As many as 70 percent of recent migrants from developing countries perform unskilled labor that native workers prefer to avoid. Unskilled migrants, mainly from North Africa and Turkey, make up 60 percent and 80 percent of total migrant flows in France, and 80 percent in Germany. But inflows of unskilled migrants are regarded unfavorably when jobs are lost to immigrants or wages fall. In a period of economic downturn foreign workers are more vulnerable to unemployment than are native workers. Labor force participation is lower among foreign workers than among native workers, and notably lower among foreign women than among native women. In an attempt to control the quality as well as the quantity of foreign workers, OECD countries are increasingly issuing temporary work permits that require workers to return home when the permits expire.

Compared with immigrants in earlier periods, recent immigrants have more diversified cultural, economic, and social backgrounds, requiring OECD countries to adopt policies to help them integrate with the society and the labor market. In parallel, these countries are adopting policies aimed at strictly controlling legal and illegal flows, tightening border controls, and restricting entry by asylum seekers. In 1995 the number of asylum seekers dropped to 460,000 from the 1992 peak of 825,000, as a result of policy changes to curb the inflow of those whose sole purpose in seeking asylum may be economic.

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The data here are based on national definitions and data collection practices and are not fully comparable across countries. Japan and the European members of the OECD traditionally have defined foreigners by nationality of descent. Australia, Canada, and the United States use the criterion of place of birth, which is closer to the concept of the immigrant stock as defined by the United Nations. However, very few countries apply only one criterion in all circumstances. For this and other reasons, data based on the concept of foreign nationality and data based on the concept of foreign-born cannot be completely reconciled.

Statistics on the stock and flow of the foreign labor force are also problematic. Countries use different permit systems to gather information on immigrants. Some countries issue a single permit for both residence and work, while others issue separate residence and work permits. Differences in immigration laws across countries, particularly with respect to immigrants’ access to the labor market, greatly affect the recording and measurement of migration and reduce the comparability of raw data at the international level.

• Foreign population is the stock of foreign national or foreign-born residents in a country.

• Foreign labor force as a percentage of total labor force is the percentage of foreign or foreign-born workers in a country’s workforce.

• Foreign labor force participation rate is the percentage of foreign population of working age that is economically active.

International migration data are collected by the OECD through information provided by national correspondents to the Continuous Reporting System on Migration (SOPEMI) network, which provides an annual overview of trends and policies. Data appear in the OECD’s Trends in International Migration (1995).

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