Labor market outcomes of migrants at the times of the covid-19 pandemic and geopolitical uncertainty

This research explores the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and geopolitical threats on migrants' labour market outcomes across the European Union and the additional pressure exerted upon the European labour markets accordingly. The methodology embeds network analysis through Gaussian graphical models, applied to a newly compiled dataset for 2021. Main results entail the adverse impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and geopolitical risks on the labour market outcomes of all workers, disproportioned and more profound in the initial stages and for sectors where migrants have a strong overrepresentation and that were most affected by the pandemic and less keen in EU countries that implemented substantial job retention schemes during the pandemic and beyond. The findings mainly highlight some of the most important effects induced by the Covid-19 pandemic as regards the severe disruption of migrants' access to employment opportunities. Several migration policies and strategic guidelines are presented and largely discussed within the paper.