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 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; Cortes 2008 ). One reason for this effect is that immigrants and U.S.-born workers generally do not compete for the same jobs; instead, many immigrants complement the work of U.S. employees and increase their productivity. For example, low-skilled immigrant laborers allow U.S.-born farmers, contractors, and craftsmen to expand agricultural production or to build more homes—thereby expanding employment possibilities and incomes for U.S. workers. Another way in which immigrants help U.S. workers is that businesses adjust to new immigrants by opening stores, restaurants, or production facilities to take advantage of the added supply of workers;