Employers’ Language Proficiency Requirements and Hiring of Immigrants Magnus Carlsson, Stefan Eriksson and Dan-Olof Rooth Labor markets in advanced economies have undergone substantial change due to globalization, technological improvements, and organizational changes, making language proficiency increasingly important even in less skilled jobs. Has this development led employers to shy away from hiring immigrants with limited host-country language skills? We shed light on this question by conducting a large-scale field experiment, where we introduce common second-language features in immigrants’ resumes. We also conduct employer surveys to interpret our experimental results. Our main finding is that language proficiency has a strong positive effect on being invited to a job interview, even in typical immigrant entry jobs.

#LanguageProficiency almost doubles callback rates for #immigrant job seekers - even in #LowSkillJobs. Magnus Carlsson, Stefan Eriksson & Dan-Olof Rooth found that improving from basic to advanced Swedish raised hiring chances from 8% to 15%.
doi.org/10.3368/jhr....