This paper investigates the relation between age at immigration to Sweden and the number of years until a migrant has the first job of substantial importance in the destination. The hypothesis under scrutiny is that the number of years until a first job of substantial importance is held is longer for foreign-born immigrants originating from middle- and low-income countries who arrive when middle aged than for their peers who arrive when younger, as well as immigrants of the same age born in high-income countries. Coupled with this, we ask if a substantial proportion of middle-aged and older immigrants born in middle- or low-income countries never succeed in having a job in their destination country.

The gap in employment between natives and foreign-born individuals in Sweden is larger than in most other rich countries (see Dustman and Frattini 2011 and de la Rica et al. 2015) and is the subject of much policy concern. It is well known that many immigrants originating from middle- and low-income countries, who arrive as refugees or for family reunion, do not work during the first few years that they reside in Sweden. As shown later in this paper, Sweden has during recent decades received an increasing number of middle-aged and older immigrants. Many such immigrants enter as refugees or for family reasons. Knowledge of the relationship between age at immigration and the length of time until the first job of substantial importance is obtained has the potential to be a piece in the puzzle explaining the weak labor market position of many immigrants to Sweden and is one motivation for this study.

In the Swedish population, the disposable income of a person, as well as his or her poverty status, is related to their present or previous career in the labor market. One can therefore expect that middle-aged immigrants who arrive in Sweden are at high risk of being poor when arriving, as are those who arrive of higher age.Footnote 1 This is an additional motivation for analyzing the relationship between age at immigration and the number of years until a foothold in the labor market in the destination country is achieved.

The international literature on how immigrants assimilate into the labor market of the host country is vast (for surveys, see Duleep 2015 and Dustmann and Görlach 2015). However, only surprisingly few studies have focused on the relationship between age at immigration and subsequent assimilation into the labor market in the host country. Most studies have focused on earnings assimilation. Their results indicate that age at immigration disfavors the earnings of middle-aged and older immigrants. There are evidence on this from the US (Friedberg 1992), Canada (Schaafsma and Sweetman 2001), and Australia (Wilkins 2003).

A commonly asked question in the literature on immigrant assimilation in the host country is how the earnings of immigrants develop over the years following their immigration in comparison to their native peers. Formulating the research question in this way is highly relevant in cases where the majority of immigrants already have a job in the destination country during the year that they arrive or soon thereafter. However, in situations where many immigrants do not have a job, it is motivated to focus on employment assimilation. A recent such study on Sweden is Akay (2016) who investigated dynamics aspects among male immigrants using panel data for the years 1990 to 2000. In this data were 7.5 % of native born not employed throughout the period compared with, for example, 25 % among men born in Africa and 30 % among men born in the Middle East. Application of a state-of-the-art non-linear dynamic assimilation model indicated the existence of a slow yet steady assimilation process. Most, but not all, categories of foreign born were found to be able to reduce the employment probability gap in the Swedish labor market to under 10 to 20 % points.

Our study is also in the tradition of analyzing large sets of data from Swedish registers. Different from Akay (2016), we focus on the importance of age at immigration and analyze the period until first having gained a foothold in the Swedish labor market.Footnote 2 A research design that focused on the period until newly arrived immigrants have a foothold in the labor market has previously been applied to Norway as well as Sweden but, unlike the present study, was not focused on the importance of age at arrival.Footnote 3 We follow all adult foreign-born persons who arrived in Sweden in each of the years 1990, 1994, 1998, and 2002. By estimating hazard rate models, we relate the length of the period to have the first job of substantial importance to age at immigration as well as selected characteristics previously shown or assumed to be of importance: education, region of Sweden upon arrival, and family status at the time of immigration.Footnote 4

As we hypothesize that the relationship between age at arrival and the time taken to get a foothold in the labor market of the destination country is steepest among immigrants from middle- and low-income countries, we estimate models for immigrants born in three different categories of countries: low-income countries, middle-income countries, and high-income countries. Differences in the period until gaining a foothold in the Swedish labor market across arrival cohorts can be due to differences in unmeasured characteristics across cohorts but also to variations in the labor market situation in the host country.

Turning to results, they show that the number of years until an immigrant holds a first job of substantial importance in Sweden decreases rapidly with age for immigrants from middle- and low-income countries who are 40 years of age or older at the point of entry. Most persons from middle- and low-income countries entering Sweden after age 50 never get a foothold in the Swedish labor market. We also show how the number of years to a first substantial job differs by year of arrival in a manner that is consistent with the business cycle in Sweden and is related to a number of other circumstances. To reiterate: Since the beginning of the 1980s, Sweden has received a substantial number of foreign-born individuals who, upon arrival, have been middle aged or older. Our results imply that, compared to natives, many of them will have low opportunities to consume for the rest of their lives due to no or low earnings as well as not having accumulated substantial pension rights. Thus, it follows that immigrants from middle- and low-income countries who arrive in Sweden when middle aged have a high risk of being poor in old age.

The article is structured as follows. In the next section, we investigate and discuss reasons why age at immigration and getting a foothold in the labor market at the destination country are related. Section 3 describes and discusses the context, outlining how the number of middle-aged and older immigrants to Sweden has increased since 1970 as well as discussing the problematic employment situation for many immigrants to Sweden. The research design is presented in Section 4. Section 5 reports descriptive results on the number of years until individuals gain substantial employment. Multivariate analysis is found in Section 6, and Section 7 summarizes the study and its findings.