Less-Educated U.S.-Born Did Better When Immigration Fell

Washington, D.C., May 09, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- A new Center for Immigration Studies analysis shows that real (inflation-adjusted) median weekly earnings for U.S.-born workers without a bachelor’s degree increased more quickly during the period of lower legal and illegal immigration from 2016 to 2019 than in the earlier and later periods, which experienced higher immigration. The combination of economic growth during this time period and the lower immigration, likely caused by the Trump administration policies, seems to have increased the earnings of less-educated U.S.-born workers. Since 2020, however, real earnings have declined for virtually all workers, which should give pause to those now calling for more immigration to reduce inflation by lowering wages, particularly for lower-paid, less-educated Americans.

“The immigration slowdown in the years just before Covid seems to have benefited less-educated poorer American-born workers, though we cannot say this with certainty,” said the report’s lead author Steven Camarota, the Center’s director of research. “What we can say with certainty is that immigration fell, the economy expanded, and lower skilled poorer American workers did well – all without sparking inflation.”  

Among the findings:

• Between the fourth quarters of 2016 and 2019, real (inflation-adjusted) weekly earnings for full-time, U.S.-born workers without a bachelor’s grew 3.2 percent. During this time, growth in the total immigrant population (legal and illegal) averaged about 400,000 a year, compared to about 730,000 a year from 2012 to 2016, when earnings actually fell slightly for the less-educated U.S.-born.

• The labor force participation rate — the share of working-age adults employed or looking for work — also increased for the less-educated U.S.-born between the fourth quarters of 2016 and 2019. In contrast, there was little improvement in the years prior to 2016, after the rate bottomed out in 2013 as a result of the Great Recession.

• The rise in earnings and labor force participation, particularly for the less-educated, along with low infla­tion and the overall good economic conditions from 2016 to 2019 runs counter to the often-made argu­ment that the U.S. economy requires very high levels of immigration to prosper.

• Among the U.S.-born with at least a bachelor’s and for immigrants generally, real weekly earnings growth did not vary with the level of immigration, increasing in both the period of higher immigration 2012 to 2016, and lower immigration 2016 to 2019.

• Real weekly earnings for virtually all workers, immigrant and U.S.-born, declined from 2020 to 2022. This almost certainly reflects the very high inflation in this time period.  However, this falloff in earnings did coin­cides with a dramatic rebound in the immigrant population, which increased 1.8 million in a single year, 2021 to 2022.