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Local Unemployment and the Relative Wages of Immigrants: Evidence from the Current Population Surveys

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Author Info
Bernt Bratsberg
Erling Barth
Oddbjørn Raaum

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Abstract

We provide evidence on wage profiles of immigrants using Current Population Survey data from 1979 to 2003, taking into account that changes in labor market conditions impact natives and immigrants differently. High rates of immigrant wage assimilation, in general, and relatively high wages of immigrant cohorts that arrived during the 1990s, in particular, can to a large extent be explained by a negative trend in unemployment in the data. Relating immigrant and native period effects to local labor market unemployment, we find that wage assimilation among lesser-educated immigrants is negligible. For high-school- and college-educated male immigrants, rates of wage assimilation during early years in the United States are procyclical, suggesting that rising unemployment slows accumulation of U.S.-specific human capital. Copyright Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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File URL: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1162/rest.88.2.243
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Publisher Info
Article provided by MIT Press in its journal The Review of Economics and Statistics.

Volume (Year): 88 (2006)
Issue (Month): 2 (05)
Pages: 243-263
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Handle: RePEc:tpr:restat:v:88:y:2006:i:2:p:243-263

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Robert J. LaLonde & Robert H. Topel, 1990. "The Assimilation of Immigrants in the U.S. Labor Markets," NBER Working Papers 3573, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  2. George J. Borjas, 2000. "The Economic Progress of Immigrants," NBER Chapters, in: Issues in the Economics of Immigration, pages 15-50 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  3. Barry R. Chiswick & Yinon Cohen & Tzippi Zach, 1997. "The labor market status of immigrants: Effects of the unemployment rate at arrival and duration of residence," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, ILR Review, ILR School, Cornell University, vol. 50(2), pages 289-303, January.
  4. David Card, 1995. "The Wage Curve: A Review," Working Papers 722, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section.. [Downloadable!]
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  5. Chiswick, Barry R, 1978. "The Effect of Americanization on the Earnings of Foreign-born Men," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 86(5), pages 897-921, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  6. Borjas, George J, 1985. "Assimilation, Changes in Cohort Quality, and the Earnings of Immigrants," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 3(4), pages 463-89, October. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Barth, Erling & Bratsberg, Bernt & Raaum, Oddbjørn, 2003. "Local Unemployment and the Earnings Assimilation of Immigrants in Norway," Memorandum 19/2002, Oslo University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  8. Richard B. Freeman, 1982. "Crime and the Labor Market," NBER Working Papers 1031, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  9. Julian R. Betts & Magnus Lofstrom, 2000. "The Educational Attainment of Immigrants: Trends and Implications," NBER Chapters, in: Issues in the Economics of Immigration, pages 51-116 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!]
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  10. Edward Funkhouser & Stephen J. Trejo, 1995. "The labor market skills of recent male immigrants: Evidence from the Current Population Survey," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, ILR Review, ILR School, Cornell University, vol. 48(4), pages 792-811, July.
  11. Paul W. Miller & Barry R. Chiswick, 2002. "Immigrant earnings: Language skills, linguistic concentrations and the business cycle," Journal of Population Economics, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 31-57. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  12. Moulton, Brent R., 1986. "Random group effects and the precision of regression estimates," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 385-397, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. repec:fth:prinin:343 is not listed on IDEAS
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  16. Eli Berman & Kevin Lang & Erez Siniver, 2000. "Language-Skill Complementarity: Returns to Immigrant Language Acquisition," NBER Working Papers 7737, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  17. James Ted McDonald & Christopher Worswick, 1997. "Unemployment Incidence of Immigrant Men in Canada," Canadian Public Policy, University of Toronto Press, vol. 23(4), pages 353-373, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  18. George J. Borjas, 1994. "The Economics of Immigration," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 32(4), pages 1667-1717, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  19. Borjas, George J., 1999. "The economic analysis of immigration," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 28, pages 1697-1760 Elsevier. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  20. David Card & John E. DiNardo, 2002. "Skill-Biased Technological Change and Rising Wage Inequality: Some Problems and Puzzles," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 20(4), pages 733-783, October. [Downloadable!]
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  21. Barth, Erling & Bratsberg, Bernt & Naylor, Robin A. & Raaum, Oddbjørn, 2002. "Explaining Variations in Wage Curves: Theory and Evidence," Memorandum 03/2002, Oslo University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  22. Darren Lubotsky, 2001. "The Effect of Changes in the U.S. Wage Structure on Recent Immigrants' Earnings," Labor and Demography 0110003, EconWPA. [Downloadable!]
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  23. George J. Borjas, 1988. "Immigration And Self-Selection," NBER Working Papers 2566, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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Full references

Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Seik Kim, . "Economic Assimilation of Foreign-Born Workers in the United States: An Overlapping Rotating Panel Analysis," Working Papers UWEC-2008-19, University of Washington, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  2. Christian Dustmann & Albrecht Glitz & Thorsten Vogel, 2006. "Employment, Wages, and the Economic Cycle: Differences between Immigrants and Natives," CReAM Discussion Paper Series 0609, Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM), Department of Economics, University College London. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  3. Dahlberg, Matz & Johansson, Kajsa & Mörk, Eva, 2008. "On mandatory activation of welfare receivers," Working Paper Series 2008:24, IFAU - Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. Stefanie Schurer, 2008. "Labour Market Outcomes of Second Generation Immigrants: How Heterogeneous Are They Really?," Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series wp2008n14, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne. [Downloadable!]
  5. Barth, Erling & Bratsberg, Bernt & Raaum, Oddbjørn, 2003. "Local Unemployment and the Earnings Assimilation of Immigrants in Norway," Memorandum 19/2002, Oslo University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  6. Seik Kim, . "Sample Attrition in the presence of Population Attrition," Working Papers UWEC-2009-02, University of Washington, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
  7. George J. Borjas & Rachel M. Friedberg, 2009. "Recent Trends in the Earnings of New Immigrants to the United States," NBER Working Papers 15406, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  8. Sanromá, Esteve & Ramos, Raul & Simón, Hipólito, 2009. "Immigrant Wages in the Spanish Labour Market: Does the Origin of Human Capital Matter?," IZA Discussion Papers 4157, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  9. Bernt Bratsberg & Oddbjørn Raaum & Knut Røed, 2007. "When Minority Labor Migrants Meet the Welfare State," IZA Discussion Papers 2872, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  10. Cristina Fernández & Carolina Ortega, 2008. "Labor market assimilation of immigrants in Spain: employment at the expense of bad job-matches?," Spanish Economic Review, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 83-107, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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