Immigration, wages, and employment under informal labor markets

Abstract

This paper studies the labor market impacts of the Venezuelan immigration in Colombia. Exploiting spatial variation in exposure, I find a negative effect on native wages driven by the informal sector (where immigrants are concentrated) and a reduction in native employment in the formal sector (where the minimum wage binds for many workers). To explain this, I build a model in which a firm substitutes formal for informal labor in response to lower informal wages. Consistent with the model’s predictions, I document that the decrease in formal employment is driven by small firms that use both labor types in production and by workers earning the minimum wage.