Language skills and unemployment: post-Soviet bilingualism in Latvia

ABSTRACTThis study investigates the relationship between the unemployment of working-age men with their skills in the local languages, Russian and Latvian, and in English, the most spoken foreign language in Latvia. To determine who benefits and from which language skills in the labour market, the analysis uses data from the Eurostat Adult Education Survey (AES 2016) and the Baltic Institute of Social Sciences Language Survey (BISS 2008). The results show an inverse link between language skills and unemployment for Latvians and Russian speakers, but more so for the latter. English skills benefit the older Latvian workers without a tertiary degree, while for Russians the benefits are greater and more general. Latvian skills benefit the younger tertiary-educated Russian speakers. For Latvians, the link between Russian-language skills and unemployment remains inconclusive. The analysis considers the bilingual context and the measurement bias of self-reported language skills.KEYWORDS: Language skillsunemploymentpost-Soviet bilingualismLatviaRussian language minority AcknowledgmentsThe authors would like to thank the participants at the 4th Baltic Economic Association Conference, the 14th International ECEE Conference and the 8th European User Conference for EU-Microdata for their useful comments and suggestions.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Data availability statementThe data that support the findings of this study are available from Eurostat (Adult Education Survey 2016) and the Baltic Institute of Social Sciences (Language Survey 2008). The responsibility for all conclusions drawn from either dataset lies entirely with the authors.Notes1. The first Russian school was founded in 1789 in Riga.2. The analysis on the BISS 2008 data also uses the bilingualism variable based on the use and intensity of both languages in communications at home.3. Estimating small samples with limited observations produces insignificant outcomes.4. The principal components combine the Latvian/Russian and English skills from the AES (2016) and receptive and expressive language skills from the BISS (2008) Language Survey.5. Latvia joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the EU in 2004, adopted the euro and joined the European Monetary Union (EMU) in 2014 and became a member of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 2016.Additional informationFundingThe research leading to these results has received funding from the EEA Grants 2014-2021 Baltic Research Programme under project S-BMT-21–8 (LT08-2-LMT-K-01–073). This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 952574 and the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No 734712. This work was also supported by the European Regional Development Fund under Grant number 2014-2020.4.01.16-0032.