Welcome to the New World, golden opportunities… or not.
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Immigrants around the world often earn less than their local coworkers. Why?
Enter Are Skeie Hermansen and team from Stockholm University. They looked for the reason behind wage gaps between immigrants and locals. They compared records of immigrants and natives from nine countries across the same and different jobs.
And? About three quarters of the gap comes from job segregation. Immigrants are steered into lower-paying roles. Language barriers and unrecognized degrees may be to blame. Policies that open doors to better jobs could help close the gap.
And in so many nations – reliant on immigrants – that’s not closing the gap… that’s opening the future.
Reference: Hermansen, A.S., Penner, A., Boza, I. et al. Immigrant–native pay gap driven by lack of access to high-paying jobs. Nature (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09259-6