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THE EFFECTS OF LABOR MARKET COMPETITION WITH IMMIGRANTS ON THE WAGES AND EMPLOYMENT OF NATIVES

What Does Existing Research Tell Us?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 June 2008

Steven Raphael  and
Lucas Ronconi
Steven Raphael*
Affiliation:
Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley
Lucas Ronconi
Affiliation:
Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley
*
Professor Steven Raphael, Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California, Berkeley, 2607 Hearst Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94720-7320. E-mail: stevenraphael@berkeley.edu
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Abstract

This paper provides an overview of the current debate among economists pertaining to the effects of recent immigration on the earnings and employment of native-born workers. Since much of this debate revolves around methodological differences in research design, we devote much of our effort to discussing the various strategies that researchers have used to isolate immigrant competition effects, and attempt to clarify the strengths and weaknesses of each strategy. Our overall assessment is that the central tendency of the research evidence suggests that recent immigration has had only a modest effect on the labor market prospects of native-born Americans. Some potential hypotheses that may explain this lack of a large impact are capital accumulation and the imperfect substitutability between natives and immigrants.

Keywords

ImmigrationEmploymentWagesSkillsIncarceration
Type
State of the Art
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , Fall 2007 , pp. 413 - 432
Copyright
Copyright © W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research 2007

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