What do economists say about immigrants taking jobs from 'native' U.S. workers?

• The 2024 U.S. presidential election has immigration as a top issue for supporters of former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee.
• At campaign events, Trump has stated that immigrants are taking jobs away from American-born workers.
• Immigrants positively influence the job market and economy, but there is ongoing discussion regarding their effect on the wages of workers without high school degrees.

A recurring theme in former President Donald Trump's speeches during his presidential campaign was the notion that immigration harms the U.S. job market.

On Sept. 21 in Wilmington, North Carolina, the Republican nominee informed supporters that they were taking their jobs.

The Pew Research Center found that while 82% of Trump supporters consider immigration "very important" to their vote in the 2024 presidential election, it is the lowest-priority issue for Democrats. The poll was conducted among 9,720 U.S. adults from Aug. 26 through Sept. 2.

According to economists, immigrants do not take jobs from or reduce the wages of U.S.-born workers, and they contribute positively to the overall economy.

According to Alexander Arnon, director of business tax and economic analysis at the Penn Wharton Budget Model, the general agreement is that there are minimal costs to U.S.-born workers resulting from immigration, specifically the type of immigration that has historically occurred in the U.S.

Immigrants expected to boost the economy

Economists stated that immigrants bring several benefits to the economy and job market.

For one, the job market isn't static.

Immigrants not only take jobs but also create new ones through spending in local economies and starting businesses, economists stated. A 2020 research paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research revealed that immigrants are 80% more likely to become entrepreneurs than native workers.

Over the next decade, the influx of immigrants to the U.S. is predicted to contribute $8.9 trillion (or 3.2%) to the country's GDP, as stated by the Congressional Budget Office, an impartial evaluator for Congress.

"Michael Clemens, a professor at George Mason University and an economist, stated that migration has a significant impact on the U.S. economy. Specifically, it creates jobs, raises pay, and increases the size and complexity of the economy."

In many job positions, immigrants are not ideal substitutes for U.S. citizens, and the two groups often work together rather than compete, according to economists.

Studies show that immigration can affect the wages of some U.S.-born workers, particularly those with lower levels of education.

While some economists argue that an influx of immigrants can lower wages for Americans in the short term, other researchers suggest that Americans ultimately benefit in the long run, as those in direct competition with immigrants are able to secure higher-paying jobs.

"Not everybody agrees about it," Clemens said.

American workers may find it "difficult and anxiety-inducing" to adjust to a large influx of new labor due to immigration.

"But people end up in better circumstances," he said.

Immigration helped cool 'overheated' job market

According to Pew, citing the most recent federal data, immigrants made up approximately 14% of the U.S. population in 2022.

In 2022, undocumented immigrants made up 3.3% of the total U.S. population and 23% of all immigrants, according to Pew. Although their numbers have grown in recent years to 11 million, they are still below their 2007 peak of over 12 million.

In recent years, the number of immigrants arriving in the U.S. has significantly risen, according to the CBO's report from July.

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The CBO predicts that net immigration will be 8.7 million higher from 2021 to 2026 compared to pre-Covid migration trends, excluding those with green cards.

The influx has been beneficial for the pandemic-era economy, economists said.

Over the past two years, Elior Cohen, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, wrote in May that the measure helped cool an overheated labor market.

As the U.S. economy began to reopen in 2021, the demand for workers reached unprecedented levels, causing wages to increase at an unprecedented pace.

Cohen wrote that immigrant labor helped ease "severe staffing shortages," particularly in the leisure and hospitality industries, which in turn helped to mitigate inflationary wage pressures.

According to Giovanni Peri, an economics professor and director of the Global Migration Center at the University of California, Davis, immigrants were not competing with U.S. citizens for jobs but instead filling a surplus of available jobs.

The decline in non-college-educated immigrants to the U.S. from 2010 to 2021 may have caused the recent labor shortages, according to him.

Peri stated that in the last two years, there has been no competition between low-skilled immigration and natives, as it has not been helping to fill shortages.

'Little evidence' of employment impact

In 2017, economists from different perspectives reached a "consensus" on the job market impact of immigration, according to Clemens.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine reported that the panel of economists found "little evidence that immigration significantly affects" overall employment levels among Americans.

Arnon of the Penn Wharton Budget Model, who authored a separate 2016 analysis of existing research on immigration's economic impact, stated that the consensus has become even stronger since then.

According to the National Academies paper, job competition from new immigrants tends to fall mostly on prior immigrants rather than native U.S. workers.

It is likely that immigrants who arrived prior to a certain time will experience negative wage effects, according to the statement.

High school dropouts, both native-born and immigrant, may experience the same effect due to sharing similar job qualifications, according to the National Academies paper.

According to the Penn Wharton analysis, the largest share of foreign-born workers are immigrants without a high school degree, followed by those with graduate or professional degrees.

A heated debate on low-skilled workers

A Harvard economist's paper, which is both influential and contentious, supports the idea that high school dropouts have a negative impact.

Borjas, one of the more than three dozen economists who authored the National Academies consensus paper, studied the Mariel boatlift, a mass emigration of 125,000 Cuban refugees to South Florida from April to October 1980.

Borjas discovered that the significant increase in the labor supply led to a "dramatic" decrease in the wages of high school dropouts in Miami, ranging from 10% to 30%.

In 2017, Stephen Miller, a senior policy adviser during the Trump administration, used a paper as a justification for a proposal to limit legal immigration, particularly among less skilled workers.

Anna Kelly, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, stated in an emailed comment that Trump has consistently maintained his commitment to prioritize American workers and encourage businesses to keep jobs within the country.

Borjas' research contradicted earlier work by economist and Nobel laureate David Card, who discovered that the Mariel boatlift did not increase unemployment or negatively affect the wages of "less-skilled" non-Cuban or Cuban workers.

Clemens, along with some other economists, disagrees with Borjas' research findings. Borjas did not respond to a request for comment.

Clemens stated that sudden spikes in immigration clearly impact the capacity of native employees to secure jobs during a particular afternoon.

Immigrants not only create jobs, but also have a positive impact on the job market, according to Clemens.

Effect may depend on the economic environment

Clemens stated that native U.S. workers and immigrants, despite having similar educational backgrounds, often work together to enhance each other's skills, resulting in increased productivity and the creation of joint jobs.

In a restaurant, a native worker with better command of spoken English might be a waiter, while an immigrant might do kitchen-prep work or wash dishes, tasks that don't require such language dexterity. On farms, native workers might be supervisors or run high-tech equipment while immigrants handpick crops, Clemens said.

A study by Peri and Alessandro Caiumi of the University of California, Davis, reveals that workers who initially compete with immigrants for jobs and later upgrade their occupations tend to earn higher wages in the future.

According to Peri and Caiumi, from 2000 to 2019, wages for less-educated native workers increased by a "significant" 1.7% to 2.6%, while there was no "significant wage effect" on college-educated natives. From 2019 to 2022, estimates suggest "small positive effects" on wages.

Michael Strain, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank, stated that "what occurred in Florida during the Mariel boatlift in the 1980s may not be the same as what happens in Arizona in the 2010s."

Determine which studies are most pertinent to the current economic climate, as advised by Strain.