Does higher education help immigrants find a job? A survival analysis

We analyse the role that education signals play in the transition rates from unemployment to finding a job. We compare the results for Ethnic Germans with those for foreigners from the same origin countries and Native Germans. In the first case, the two have the same labour market access but different migration backgrounds. In the second case, the migration background is similar, but labour market access is not. We find that Ethnic Germans fare better than foreigners because more of them are able to accredit their foreign degrees and hence can apply for a job as a medium- or high-skilled individual which both have faster transition rates than the low-skilled. However, both foreigners and Ethnic Germans with accredited degrees have similar transition rates. Finally, if education signals are acquired in Germany, the differences between all three groups vanish more or less completely.