The manual, communicative and quantitative abilities of native and foreign workers according to their level of education in Italy

Many studies address the labour market consequences of immigration flows. A branch of them argues that native workers respond to immigration by specializing in jobs where they have a comparative advantage, thus protecting themselves from labour market competition and possible wage losses. In order to examine this dynamic in the Italian labour market, we analysed the characteristics of jobs in Italy in terms of skills and tasks performed. The results show that foreigners hold more manual jobs, while natives hold jobs with more communicative and quantitative content.