The Income Assimilation of Migrants on the Russian Labor Market

The flows of migrants entering the territory of the Russian Federation remains stable and high. That has a significant impact on the functioning of the labor market. There is a gap in the labor incomes of migrants and the local population, but the problem of assimilation of labor incomes of migrants and reducing the gap with the local population is not sufficiently explored. This work fulfills this gap. On the panel data of the RLMS-HSE for 2010—2016, we examine the dynamics of the wages of migrants, depending on the time spent in the country. We examine models with fixed (FE) and random effects (RE), as well as pooled OLS model. The work contains a review of the literature on the topic, a description of the portrait of the migrant and a model of assimilation of the wages of migrants in the Russian labor market. The results of the study do not support the initial hypothesis that, over time, labor incomes of migrants are growing, reducing the gap with the incomes of the local population. Labor incomes of migrants remain at the level of the first year of work in the country.