Language Skills and Labor Market Performance of Immigrants in the Netherlands

Many immigrants in the Netherlands have poor Dutch language skills. They face problems in speaking and reading Dutch. Our paper investigates how these prob-<br/>lems affect their labor market performance in terms of employment, hours of work<br/>and wages. We find that for female immigrants language problems have signifi-<br/>cantly negative effects on hourly wages but not on employment probability and<br/>hours of work. For male immigrants language problems do not affect employment<br/>probability, hours of work or hourly wages.