2015 census data suggests there were 1.3 million Syrians living in Jordan compared to a population of 6.6 million Jordanian citizens. This paper investigates the impact of the Syrian refugee influx on labor market outcomes in Jordan. The authors make use Jordan Labor Market Panel Survey data from before (2010) and after (2016) the Syrian influx, combined with information on where the refugee influx was concentrated. Key results include:
• Although the Syrian working age population was about 16 percent the size of the Jordanian population in 2016, the Syrian labor force in 2016 was equivalent to about 9 percent of the Jordanian labor force. There were 1.3 million employed Jordanians in 2016 compared to 117,000 employed Syrians.
• Syrians tend to have different types of work than Jordanians. Syrians are not competing for public sector jobs, and few Jordanians are doing the sort of informal or irregular work taken by Syrians.
• Overall, Jordanians living in areas with additional refugees have had no worse labor market outcomes than Jordanians with less exposure to the refugee influx.
The authors suggest that given the composition and characteristics of the refugees as predominately children and women, and on average lower education compared to natives, their labor market participation has been low and so the impact on natives’ labor market outcomes has been limited. Additionally, the increase in the size of the refugee population has created demand for goods and services, which might have offset any potential negative impact on Jordanians’ employment that would have resulted from an increase in labor supply.