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Post-Soviet Immigrants

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Post-Soviet Immigrants in the Israel Labor Market:
Difficulties of Finding a Satisfactory Job
In past two decades, a great number of studies have been examining the impact that post-Soviet immigrants in Israel might have had on the Israeli labor market (Cohen and Hsieh, 2000; Cohen-Goldner and Paserman, 2011; Weinberg, 2001). Although the authors agree that the mass immigration form Former Soviet Union (FSU) countries have truly had an impact on Israeli labor market, there is no single opinion on how significant the impact was and what aspects of the labor market were affected the most. While Cohen-Goldner and Paserman (2011: 1029) argue that there was an adverse influence on wages as they started decreasing, Cohen and Hsieh (2000: 27) suggest …show more content…

Furthermore, I will provide some historical feedback about the economy and the labor market structure in the Soviet Union. Additionally, I will provide some evidence for which level of language proficiency, namely in Hebrew and English, the immigrants achieved before immigrating to Israel. The data and references used in this paper are based on the target group of FSU immigrants who currently live in Israel and have tried to find a workplace. To analyze this data, I will evaluate which factors, either from professional or everyday life prospective, prevent the immigrants from successful assimilation with the native labor force. I will argue that even though most of the FSU immigrants in Israel have had a high level of education and substantial work experience in their home countries, they have faced some barriers that made their integration in the labor market quite difficult. To support this assertion, I will demonstrate that, because the immigrants came from communist countries and were not really familiar with the market economy, they had almost no experience of searching for a job on their own. Additionally, I will claim that the language barrier is one of the main pitfalls considered by Israeli employers, as the majority of the immigrants are not proficient in Hebrew (Remennick, 2010: 435). Also, the differences between Soviet and Israeli degrees, certifications and job responsibilities made it more complicated to integrate in the local work force and compete with Israeli employees. Finally, the labor supply shock, that is, overcrowded labor market, mention above, had a detrimental effect not only on the local population, but also on the immigrants. In the long run, as more barriers will be examined, FSU citizens who plan to immigrate to Israel will be more aware of potential pitfalls in the Israeli labor market, and this knowledge may provide a chance for smoother labor

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