Labour market performance and migration flows - European ...

European CommissionOccasional Paper 60, Volume IMost migrants are highly-skilled (more than 10 years of schooling), males (80%) and young (below35). Today, just under half of the country’s population has one or more family members living abroad(46.2%), these having emigrated between 1975 and 2000.In other countries, the relative size of labour migration to the working age population is smaller,but nevertheless substantial: almost 10% in Jordan, 8.6% in Morocco and less than 5% in Syria, forinstance. Tunisia is a special case where the net migration balance was positive for the period 1990-2007 (i.e., more immigrants or returning emigrants than emigrants), although after a year-to-yearpositive balance between 1990 and 1999 (of between 3000 and 9000 net entrants a year, with a peak in1990 of 84,974 due to the first Gulf War), net outward migration has resumed, with a growingnegative net balance over the period reaching the 20,000 a year mark in 2006-2007 (a migration rate of23% of new entrants to the labour market) (see National Background Paper, Mahjoub 2009, p. 39).In any case, although statistics for flows are even more difficult to find than for migration stocks,there is evidence of increasing migration rates across AMCs. Taking the current migration rate of anaverage 8% as a minimum level of probable migration, the increase in the working age population ofAMCs will translate into a minimum yearly migration flow of 200,000 persons between 2010 and2020 (i.e., 2 million new AMC migrants over the period; see Figure 1.1.1). But there is strongevidence of increasing migration rates across AMCs in the last decade (23% in Tunisia, close to 100%in Lebanon), so that this flow could easily triple to 6 million new migrants over the next ten years ifmigration rates reach, for instance, a level of 24%, a level which is more consistent with recentevidence. The World Bank (2009a, p. 56) estimates a substantially higher level of migration fromAMCs, projecting it at 1.3 million migrants a year between 2010 and 2020 if current migration ratesare maintained.As for the educational profile of AMC migrant workers, the share of highly-educated migrantsamong all migrants is smaller for MENA migrants as a whole than for other migrants in OECDcountries. And the highly educated immigrants from MENA are concentrated in Anglo-Saxoncountries, where the share of MENA immigrants is relatively low. Adams (2006) shows evidence of aclear difference in the educational profile of Maghreb and Mashreq emigrants (to OECD countries):whereas most of Syrian, Lebanese and Jordan emigrants are highly-skilled (more than 13 years ofschooling), in the case of North African countries more than 70% of registered migrants are lowskilled (See Figure 4.2.1). Although this data is outdated, more recent evidence tends to confirm thispattern: as shown by Figure 6.3.1.1, skills levels of non EU-born workers in the EU in 2008 (both forrecent immigrants and for those with more than 7 years of residence) are the lowest of any of groupingof countries (with the exception of Turkey) for North Africa, whereas skill levels for Near and MiddleEastern migrant workers are well above average.Figure 4.2.1: Distribution of emigrants from theMENA to OECD by level of education (2000)Morocco70.616.512.9TunisiaSyriaLebanon3130.47324.725.112.1 14.944.344.5Low-skilled (less than8 years of schooling)Medium-skilled (9-12years of schooling)High-skilled (more than13 years of schooling)Jordan16.42855.60% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%60