The Labour Market Integration of Refugees in Germany: Evidence from a Field Experiment

We design a field experiment to evaluate the role of matching frictions for the labour market integration of refugees. During job counseling sessions, we interview around 400 job-seeking refugees that recently arrived in and around the city of Munich. All participants receive a standard CV in German and basic job search information. We then randomly allocate half of the refugees to the treatment group, which receives matching services from an NGO: the NGO identifies suitable employers and, upon agreement of a candidate, sends out the CV. This treatment can isolate the effect of matching and information frictions, while it has no effect on the underlying skills of refugees. We track all the participants over time by conducting follow-up surveys every six months. The collected survey data includes information on the background characteristics of refugees, their job-search strategies, labour market outcomes, and perceptions of social integration. Preliminary results (we have completed around 40 percent of the first-round follow-up surveys) suggest that finding employment is very challenging for refugees even in a labour market with little unemployment. They also suggest that while the treatment increases the chances of being in contact with employers, those contacts do not imply large employment differentials, at least in the first six months. Future work will use larger number and later rounds of the follow-up survey and will consider outcomes including employment duration, quality of the match, and wages.