Employment and education among young people with immigrant background. 2013

This report describes how the share of young people aged 16-34 years in employ¬ment and education varies with immigration background. The following three groups are compared: 1) Those who arrived in Norway as immigrants from Eastern-Europe outside the EU, from Asia, Africa and South- and Central-America; 2) those born in Norway to immigrant parents with background from the mentioned world regions and 3) people of non-immigrant background (i.e. the majority population). The report is based on register statistics for the 4th quarter 2013.

The 2013 figures confirm the main pattern in our previous researches in the sense that the Norwegian-born to immigrant parents are much closer to the majority population than the immigrant group when looking at the share that are in employment or in education. The difference in relation to the majority is 4.9 percentage points among the Norwegian- born to immigrant parents and 24 percentage points among immigrants when looking at the group 16-34 years of age as a whole. Immigrants, who immigrated before compulsory school, are, however, approximately on the same level as the Norwegian-born to immigrant parents.

There are some nuances within the various age groups, for instance slightly larger gaps to the majority in the share of actives (in job or education) among Norwegian- born to immigrant parents above 24 years of age compared to the younger ones. Within the age group 25-29 years the gap is 8.6 percentage points and among those aged 30-34 years almost 10 percentage points, due to lower shares of actives within these age groups. This tendency appears among both sexes, but is strongest among married women with children. The share of actives among these Norwegian-born women with immigrant parents is about 14 percentage points lower than the share among majority women at the same age and civil status.

The gender gap is small among Norwegian-born to immigrant parents and is in favour of women when regarding the group 16-34 years as a whole. But within the age group 30-34 years, the gender difference is in favour of men, but it is, however, moderate compared to the immigrant group, i.e. 4.4 percentage points versus 13.4 percentage points. In the majority men lie 2.4 percentage points above women within this age group.

Immigrant males have a considerably higher level of activity compared to the females among those above 19 years of age and hence are closer to the majority. The difference between immigrant women and majority women is about 27 -32 percentage points, while the difference among immigrant men and majority men is about 16-17 percentage points.

The gender gap is, however, quite moderate among those who immigrated before 15 years of age. Among the later immigrants the gender gap is larger, especially among those who immigrated after 20 years of age, where the shares of actives are consider¬ably low among women. Since these immigrant women constitute 60 per cent of all the immigrant women in our population, they thus reduce the average of immigrant women.

It should be noticed that differences in education level among those above 19 years of age still are of greater importance than immigrant background as the shares of actives are concerned. We can observe a larger gap between immigrants with compulsory education only and immigrants with higher education compared to the difference among immigrants and the majority at the same educational level. Moreover there are higher shares of actives among Norwegian-born to immigrant parents and immigrants with education above compulsory level compared to the majority with compulsory education only. It is people with compulsory education only who in particular have the lowest rates of actives within all three population groups. Since the groups with immigrant background have larger shares of only compulsory educated than the majority among those above 19 years of age, this is an important cause behind the differences in activity level between the population groups.