Report: Immigration a Boost for Native-Born Employment

A new analysis of employment rates of native-born U.S. workers compared to trends in foreign-born shares of the workforce finds that employment rates for native-born workers in a given local area actually rose by a small amount when more immigrants arrived. That finding is part of a new report released today by the Bipartisan Policy Center.

The report, authored for BPC by Ryan D. Edwards and Mao-Mei Liu of the University of California, Berkeley, finds that although economic vulnerability among U.S. workers is a real phenomenon, the fact that immigration does not coincide with lower native employment rates should lead to a reassessment of the common assumption that immigrants take jobs from native workers.

The authors find that with every percentage point increase in the foreign-share of the labor force in a given area, the native employment rate will rise by a small but statistically significant amount, which has a meaningful effect on the local economy.

Edwards and Liu will discuss their findings in a live webcast today at 1 p.m. Eastern. The full report is available now.