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The impact of Mexican immigrants on U.S. wage structure

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Author Info
Maude Toussaint-Comeau
Abstract

Previous study by Card and Lewis (2005) has found (puzzling) that inflows of Mexican immigrants into “new” metropolitan areas have had no effect on the relative wages of very low-skill (high school dropouts). Rather, Mexican workers do affect relative wages for high school graduates. Whereas Card and Lewis’ study uses variations across geographies, this paper considers variations across occupations. Recognizing that Mexican immigrants are highly occupationally clustered (disproportionately work in distinctive “very low wage” occupations), we use this fact to motivate the empirical approach to analyze the relationship between the composition of Mexican immigrants across occupations/industries and average wages in the occupations/industries. To summarize our finding, we confirm that in spite of the fact that Mexican immigrants are disproportionately in “very low skill” occupations, (which we define as occupations where the average workers have no high school education), we find no significant impact of Mexican immigrants on wages in those occupations. By contrast, inflows of Mexican immigrants have some small effects on the wages of native workers in “low skill” occupations (which we define as occupations where the average worker has at least some high school education or is a high school graduate). These results suggest potential “spill over effects” as natives may be reallocating their labor supply into non-predominant Mexican occupations. An analysis of employment changes of natives into different occupation groupings in response to an inflow of Mexican immigrants, confirms that natives’ employment in occupations where the average worker has a high school education increases in response to Mexican inflows in the U.S labor force from previous periods.

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Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago in its series Working Paper Series with number WP-07-24.

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Date of creation: 2007
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Handle: RePEc:fip:fedhwp:wp-07-24

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Keywords: Immigrants ; Wages;

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  1. Chiswick, Carmel U. & Chiswick, Barry R. & Karras, Georgios, 1992. "The impact of immigrants on the macroeconomy," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 279-316, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Giovanni Peri & Chad Sparber, 2007. "Task Specialization, Comparative Advantages, and the Effects of Immigration on Wages," NBER Working Papers 13389, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Rachel M. Friedberg, 2001. "The Impact Of Mass Migration On The Israeli Labor Market," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 116(4), pages 1373-1408, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Pia M. Orrenius & Madeline Zavodny, 2006. "Does Immigration Affect Wages? A Look at Occupation-Level Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 2481, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
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  5. Gianmarco I.P. Ottaviano & Giovanni Peri, 2005. "Rethinking the Gains from Immigration: Theory and Evidence from the U.S," NBER Working Papers 11672, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  6. David Card, 2005. "Is the New Immigration Really so Bad?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(507), pages F300-F323, November. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  7. Card, David, 2001. "Immigrant Inflows, Native Outflows, and the Local Labor Market Impacts of Higher Immigration," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 19(1), pages 22-64, January. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  8. Friedberg, Rachel M, 2000. "You Can't Take It with You? Immigrant Assimilation and the Portability of Human Capital," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 18(2), pages 221-51, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  9. George J. Borjas & Richard B. Freeman & Lawrence F. Katz, 1996. "Searching for the Effect of Immigration on the Labor Market," NBER Working Papers 5454, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  10. 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)
  11. LaLonde, Robert J & Topel, Robert H, 1991. "Immigrants in the American Labor Market: Quality, Assimilation, and Distributional Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(2), pages 297-302, May.
  12. Sicherman, Nachum & Galor, Oded, 1990. "A Theory of Career Mobility," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(1), pages 169-92, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  13. Borjas, G.J. & Freeman, R.B. & Katz, L.F., 1991. "On The Labor Market Effects Of Immigration And Trade," Harvard Institute of Economic Research Working Papers 1556, Harvard - Institute of Economic Research.
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  14. David H. Autor & Frank Levy & Richard J. Murnane, 2001. "The Skill Content of Recent Technological Change: An Empirical Exploration," NBER Working Papers 8337, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  15. George J. Borjas & Richard B. Freeman & Kevin Lang, 1991. "Undocumented Mexican-born Workers in the United States: How Many, How Permanent?," NBER Chapters, in: Immigration, Trade and the Labor Market, pages 77-100 National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!]
  16. David Card, 1990. "The impact of the Mariel boatlift on the Miami labor market," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, ILR Review, ILR School, Cornell University, vol. 43(2), pages 245-257, January.
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  17. Ethan Lewis, 2003. "Local, open economies within the U.S.: how do industries respond to immigration?," Working Papers 04-1, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. [Downloadable!]
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