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Brussels Economic Review

The demand for high-skilled workers and immigration policy

This paper provides a descriptive analysis of the demand for high-skilled workers using a new firm data set, the IZA International Employer Survey 2000. Our results suggest that while workers from EU-countries are mainly complements to domestic high-skilled workers, workers from non-EU countries are hired because of a shortage of high-skilled labour. The paper, furthermore, provides a short description of recent German policy initiatives regarding the temporary immigration of high-skilled labour. In view of our descriptive results these temporary immigration policies seem, however, to satisfy only partly the demand of firms interested in recruiting foreign high-skilled workers. A more comprehensive immigration policy covering also the permanent immigration of high-skilled workers appears to be necessary.

Bauer, T. and A. Kunze (2004), The demand for high-skilled workers and immigration policy. Brussels Economic Review, 47, 1, 77-88

https://dipot.ulb.ac.be/dspace/bitstream/2013/11917/1/ber-0283.pdf