It is a detailed portrait that the research department of the Ministry of Labor (DARES) has just delivered on the situation in 2021 of the 4.7 million immigrants and the 4 million descendants of immigrants of working age, i.e. just over one in five people aged 15 to 64.
First observation: professional segregation continues to be strongly marked on the labor market, with an over-representation of workers of immigrant origin among workers and employees and an under-representation among managers. But it tends to diminish among the descendants of immigrants. Dares has in fact calculated that over the years 2018-2020, it would be enough for 10.3% of the descendants of immigrants to change jobs for the distribution by job to be identical to that of people in employment without immigrant ancestry. On the other hand, the percentage of transfer between professions would have to be very high to achieve this result for immigrants since it exceeds 25%.
Workers of foreign origin have benefited like others from the improvement in the labor market , also notes the Ministry of Labor, causing a drop in their unemployment rate. It is nonetheless at a much higher level than that of other working people, at 12.7% for immigrants and 11.6% for descendants of immigrants, compared to 6.8% for people without immigrant ancestry. . But this gap has tended to decrease in recent years, underlines the DARES.
Occupational segregation
This is particularly true for the population of African descent. It remains by far the most affected by unemployment with a rate of 15.3% for immigrants of this origin and 15.6% for their descendants. But the gap with working people without immigrant ancestry has fallen from nearly 14 points in 2015 to less than 9 points in 2021.
The probability of being unemployed also fell for this population. It fell from the record of 2.57 in 2014 to 1.96 in 2021 for African immigrants, following an almost continuous downward movement over the period. For their descendants, the improvement has been less regular and clear, with a succession of drops and jumps after the high of 2.26 reached in 2010, with a low of 1.78 in 2015. But in 2021, it is all similarly returned to 1.96.
Immigrants and their descendants are also more affected than others by precariousness. Thus, in 2021, according to the study by the Ministry of Labor, nearly 20% of the former were on temporary contracts (interim or CDD) and more than 17% of the latter, compared to around 14% of people without immigrant ascendants. And people of non-European origin were even more affected by these short contracts. Immigrants in general and descendants of African origin are also part-timers more frequently than others.