Title: What Immigration Means For U.S. Employment and Wages
Headings: What Immigration Means For U.S. Employment and Wages
What Immigration Means For U.S. Employment and Wages
The Impact of Immigrants on Employment and Earnings
A Path Forward with An Economic Approach to Immigration Reform
The April Jobs Gap
Conclusion
Brookings on Job Numbers

Content: In that debate, one area of disagreement has been the impact of immigration on the U.S. labor force and the wages of American workers—particularly during today’s difficult economic times. In fact, because of the weak labor market immigration flows have changed dramatically since the start of the Great Recession—the undocumented population has declined ( Passel and Cohn 2010; DHS 2012 ), and the number of high-skilled H-1B visas being issued was down by over 25 percent in 2010 from a 2001 peak ( US State Department ). As the economy continues to recover, however, it is likely that demand for immigrant labor by American businesses and the desire of immigrants to work in the United States will continue to rise. The ability of our immigration system to respond to these demands remains an important economic policy issue, both in the short term and for our country’s long-term growth strategy. In this month’s employment analysis, we discuss the economic evidence on what immigration means for U.S. jobs and the economy in advance of The Hamilton Project’s May 15th immigration forum in Washington, DC. We also continue to update our analysis of the “jobs gap,” or the number of jobs that the U.S. economy needs to create in order to return to pre-recession employment levels, releasing an exciting new interactive feature that allows readers to calculate when the country will close the jobs gap at different rates of job creation. The Impact of Immigrants on Employment and Earnings
Although many are concerned that immigrants compete against Americans for jobs, the most recent economic evidence suggests that, on average, immigrant workers increase the opportunities and incomes of Americans. Based on a survey of the academic literature, economists do not tend to find that immigrants cause any sizeable decrease in wages and employment of U.S.-born citizens ( Card 2005 ), and instead may raise wages and lower prices in the aggregate ( Ottaviano and Peri 2008; Ottaviano and Peri 2010;