Italexit and the Impact of Immigrants from Italy on the Italian Labor Market

Considering the recent debates regarding Brexit and the potential negative effects of immigrants on Italian labor market, the main aim of this paper is to assess the impact of immigrants from Italy on the labor market of this country using econometric techniques. Based on these results, one answer regarding the potential exit of Italy from the EU (Italexit) because of the immigration issue is provided. According to a Johansen co-integration test, there was not any long-run relationship between the number of EU immigrants from Italy and the variation of unemployment rate in the period from 1990 to 2019. The estimations based on Bayesian ridge regressions indicated that the number of EU immigrants did not affect labor cost index in business economy, manufacturing or industry, construction and services in the period 2001-2019. The variation in employed immigrants from Italy in the period 2008-2019 depends on changes in risk of poverty or social exclusion, housing cost overburden rate, exports of goods and services, inflation and tax rate on low wage earners and adult participation in learning.