Abstract
Six refugee cohorts are followed in public registers with regard to their employment, educational activity, and registered unemployment from the year after they settled in Norway up to and including 1993. The proportion employed increased in relation to the time elapsed since the refugees settled in Norway (“the duration of stay effect”) and dropped depending on how late in the period from 1987 to 1992 that happened (“the cohort effect”). The latter effect was clearly the strongest. While the proportion employed increased by 7–10 percentage points in the course of three to six years, the proportion employed in the first year after settlement dropped no less than 24 percentage points from the earliest to the latest settlement cohort.
It is argued that the cohort effect probably reflects the general economic situation in the host country at the time the refugees are ready to enter the workforce. This underlines the importance of keeping the cohort effect and the duration of stay effect separate when analysing the integration of refugees in the labour market. Data for 1994 and 1995, presented in an epilogue, show that the proportion employed no longer declined for each new refugee cohort after the economic turnaround in the latter half of 1993. Both the most recent refugee cohorts and those who settled during the economic recession benefited from this growth in employment.
The project was supported by the Norwegian Ministry of Local Government and Labour.
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