No empirical evidence has ever been reported that the large inflow of accession immigrants - following the 2004 expansion of the European Union - led to a fall in wages or employment, or a rise in unemployment in the UK between 2004 and 2006. This immigration shock was unexpectedly larger and...

Using the underexplored, sizeable and long Lifetime Labour Market Database (LLMDB) we estimate the immigrant–native earnings gap at entry and over time for the UK between 1978 and 2006. That is, we attempt to separately estimate cohort and assimilation effects. We also estimate the associated...