Who cleans my house if the government pays? Refugees, low-educated workers, and long-term unemployed in tax-subsidized domestic service firms

Abstract

Many European countries have implemented policies to revive their domestic service sectors. A common goal of these reforms has been to create employment for disadvantaged groups on the domestic labor market. I evaluate a Swedish policy where domestic service firms receive a 50% tax deduction on labor costs. Detailed data from tax records identify all formal workers and owners of firms that receive deductions. I describe the composition of workers and owners in these firms with respect to three groups targeted by Swedish policymakers: refugees, people with low education, and people who enter the workforce from long-term unemployment. I find that the shares of refugees and long-term unemployed in the subsidized sector barely exceed the shares in the full private labor force, and fall far below the shares in industrial sectors with a predominance of elementary jobs. The share of people with low education is higher than in the full private sector and on par with other low-skilled sectors. I conclude that the tax subsidy largely failed to improve employment opportunities among the target groups. An extended analysis suggests that labor immigration from other EU countries may be a partial explanation for this. EU immigrants operate half of all subsidized firms in Sweden's largest cities and nearly exclusively employ other EU immigrants.