Wage Differentials between Ethnic Groups in Switzerland

This paper analyses the average wage differentials between various groups of immigrants and the Swiss workers. Classical Oaxaca‐Blinder decompositions are applied to a sample of 7,494 males (whose 1,070 immigrants) interviewed for the 1995 Swiss Labour Force Survey. Education and experience before and after migration are separately considered in two different ways. We control for sample selection in the wage and salary sector. We also investigate earnings differentials between natives and immigrants who arrived in the country before the age of 6. Our main results are that the part of differentials due to difference in coefficient varies strongly with different ethnic groups considered, that education is a strong determinant of the difference in observed characteristics and that second generation immigrants are fairly well assimilated in the Swiss labour market.