What are the employment and poverty trends for Somali immigrants in [country] by year from 2015 to 2025?

1. National employment trajectory: participation strong, employment uneven

Across the United States, Somali immigrants exhibit relatively strong labor‑force participation—around 70 percent—comparable to or slightly above all foreign‑born averages, but measured employment rates vary by study and year: survey data from earlier in the decade put working‑age Somali employment near 58 percent (2011–2015), while other compilations covering 2007–2025 emphasize progress yet continuing gaps in earnings and occupational mobility that reflect language and credential barriers ^{[1] [2]}.

2. Unemployment spikes and cohort differences: headline numbers obscure nuance

Historical snapshots show very high unemployment in some contexts—international reporting cites a 37 percent unemployment figure for Somalis in 2012 in certain European datasets—underscoring that unemployment and underemployment can be concentrated in specific arrival cohorts, locales, and among those with interrupted education; U.S. and state estimates across 2015–2025 therefore mix long‑settled, U.S.‑born second generation, and recent refugee arrivals, producing year‑to‑year volatility in headline unemployment figures ^{[5] [2]}.

3. Poverty trends: elevated and geographically concentrated

Multiple sources find Somali poverty rates substantially above national averages: aggregated U.S. summaries report Somali poverty of roughly 25–37 percent depending on methodology, well above broader immigrant and native‑born rates, and Minnesota‑focused work estimates roughly 37–38 percent of Somali adults below the official poverty line—figures that remain broadly stable across the 2015–2025 window in the reporting, indicating persistent, not transient, disadvantage ^{[1] [3] [4]}.

4. Welfare use, educational barriers, and political framing

Analyses emphasizing welfare receipt—such as reports cited by CIS and some press stories—document high rates of program participation among Somali‑headed households (food assistance, Medicaid, housing supports), and connect that to lower average educational attainment and limited English proficiency (for example, cited figures showing roughly 39 percent of working‑age Somali immigrants without a high‑school diploma and near‑60 percent reporting less than “very well” English proficiency in some datasets), but these studies carry policy and ideological agendas and are disputed on sampling and interpretation grounds; fact‑checking coverage notes wide confidence intervals and the role of poverty in making households eligible for means‑tested programs rather than fraud or singular cultural explanations ^{[6] [4] [1]}.

5. Country‑of‑origin context and remittances complicate interpretation

Poverty in destination communities cannot be separated from Somalia’s deep, prolonged poverty: surveys and World Bank analysis show extremely high deprivation inside Somalia—often cited as near‑majority or higher levels of poverty—which both drives migration and shapes the skills and resources new arrivals carry, a contextual fact frequently referenced by development sources and migration specialists ^{[7] [8] [9]}.

6. What the reporting cannot deliver: no complete annual series 2015–2025 for a single country

None of the provided documents present a consistent, annualized 2015–2025 time series for Somali immigrant employment and poverty for a single country; available evidence is a patchwork of cross‑sectional surveys, multi‑year aggregates, state reports, and advocacy research—useful for identifying persistent high poverty, substantial labor‑force engagement, and strong geographic variation (especially concentrations in Minnesota), but insufficient to produce a precise year‑by‑year table for 2015–2025 ^{[1] [3] [2]}.

7. Bottom line and competing interpretations

The sober reading of these sources is clear: Somali immigrants have higher poverty rates and face educational and language barriers that depress earnings, even while many are economically active; some conservative analyses emphasize welfare dependence and fraud concerns, while other organizations and demographers stress structural causes (conflict‑driven displacement, interrupted schooling, discrimination) and caution about sampling or framing biases—both empirical claims and political agendas shape the reporting, and both must be weighed when using these numbers for policy or public commentary ^{[6] [4] [10]}.