IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cen/wpaper/24-05.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Low-Wage Jobs, Foreign-Born Workers, and Firm Performance

Author

Listed:
  • Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes
  • Esther Arenas-Arroyo
  • Parag Mahajan
  • Bernhard Schmidpeter

Abstract

We examine how migrant workers impact firm performance using administrative data from the United States. Exploiting an unexpected change in firms� likelihood of securing low-wage workers through the H-2B visa program, we find limited crowd-out of other forms of employment and no impact on average pay at the firm. Yet, access to H-2B workers raises firms� annual revenues and survival likelihood. Our results are consistent with the notion that guest worker programs can help address labor shortages without inflicting large losses on incumbent workers.

Suggested Citation

  • Catalina Amuedo-Dorantes & Esther Arenas-Arroyo & Parag Mahajan & Bernhard Schmidpeter, 2024. "Low-Wage Jobs, Foreign-Born Workers, and Firm Performance," Working Papers 24-05, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    • Handle: RePEc:cen:wpaper:24-05
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www2.census.gov/library/working-papers/2024/adrm/ces/CES-WP-24-05.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2024
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Parag Mahajan, 2021. "Immigration and Local Business Dynamics: Evidence from U.S. Firms," Working Papers 21-18, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    2. Andreas Beerli & Jan Ruffner & Michael Siegenthaler & Giovanni Peri, 2021. "The Abolition of Immigration Restrictions and the Performance of Firms and Workers: Evidence from Switzerland," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(3), pages 976-1012, March.
    3. Gianluca Orefice & Giovanni Peri, 2020. "Immigration and Worker-Firm Matching," Working Papers DT/2020/02, DIAL (Développement, Institutions et Mondialisation).
    4. Michael A. Clemens & Ethan G. Lewis & Hannah M. Postel, 2018. "Immigration Restrictions as Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence from the Mexican Bracero Exclusion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(6), pages 1468-1487, June.
    5. Michael A. Clemens & Ethan G. Lewis, 2022. "The Effect of Low-Skill Immigration Restrictions on US Firms and Workers: Evidence from a Randomized Lottery," NBER Working Papers 30589, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Christian Dustmann & Albrecht Glitz, 2015. "How Do Industries and Firms Respond to Changes in Local Labor Supply?," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(3), pages 711-750.
    7. Dixit, Avinash K & Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1977. "Monopolistic Competition and Optimum Product Diversity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 67(3), pages 297-308, June.
    8. Shalise Ayromloo & Benjamin Feigenberg & Darren Lubotsky, 2020. "States Taking the Reins? Employment Verification Requirements and Local Labor Market Outcomes," NBER Working Papers 26676, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Giovanni Peri & Kevin Shih & Chad Sparber, 2016. "STEM Workers, H-1B Visas, and Productivity in US Cities," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: The Economics of International Migration, chapter 9, pages 277-307, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    10. Nada Wasi & Aaron Flaaen, 2015. "Record linkage using Stata: Preprocessing, linking, and reviewing utilities," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 15(3), pages 672-697, September.
    11. Agostina Brinatti & Nicolas Morales, 2021. "Firm Heterogeneity and the Impact of Immigration: Evidence from German Establishments," Working Paper 21-16, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Silliman, Mikko & Willén, Alexander, 2024. "Worker Power, Immigrant Sorting, and Firm Dynamics," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 13/2024, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Parag Mahajan, 2021. "Immigration and Local Business Dynamics: Evidence from U.S. Firms," Working Papers 21-18, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    2. Agostina Brinatti & Xing Guo, 2023. "Third-Country Effects of U.S. Immigration Policy," Staff Working Papers 23-60, Bank of Canada.
    3. Marco Alfano & Ross McKenzie & Graeme Roy, 2020. "The cross-occupational effects of immigration on native wages in the UK," Working Papers 2011, University of Strathclyde Business School, Department of Economics.
    4. Ariu, Andrea & Müller, Tobias & Nguyen, Tuan, 2023. "Immigration and the Slope of the Labor Demand Curve: The Role of Firm Heterogeneity in a Model of Regional Labor Markets," CEPR Discussion Papers 18091, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Lee, Jongkwan & Peri, Giovanni & Yasenov, Vasil, 2022. "The labor market effects of Mexican repatriations: Longitudinal evidence from the 1930s," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    6. Amior, Michael & Stuhler, Jan, 2023. "Immigration, Monopsony and the Distribution of Firm Pay," IZA Discussion Papers 16692, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Silliman, Mikko & Willén, Alexander, 2024. "Worker Power, Immigrant Sorting, and Firm Dynamics," Discussion Paper Series in Economics 13/2024, Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Economics.
    8. Nover, Justus, 2023. "Local labor markets as a taxable location factor? Evidence from a shock to foreign labor supply," ZEW Discussion Papers 23-012, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    9. Dicarlo, Emanuele, 2022. "How Do Firms Adjust to Negative Labor Supply Shocks? Evidence from Migration Outflows," IZA Discussion Papers 14994, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Emanuele Dicarlo, 2022. "How do firms adjust to a negative labor supply shock? Evidence form migration outflows," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 1361, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    11. Agostina Brinatti & Mingyu Chen & Parag Mahajan & Nicolas Morales & Kevin Shih, 2024. "The Impact of Immigration on Firms and Workers: Insights from the H-1B Lottery," Working Paper 24-04, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    12. Naguib, Costanza, 2019. "Estimating the Heterogeneous Impact of the Free Movement of Persons on Relative Wage Mobility," Economics Working Paper Series 1903, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    13. Dario Diodato & Ricardo Hausmann & Frank Neffke, 2020. "The impact of return migration from the U.S. on employment and wages in Mexican cities," Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography (PEEG) 2012, Utrecht University, Department of Human Geography and Spatial Planning, Group Economic Geography, revised Mar 2020.
    14. Alberto Alesina & Marco Tabellini, 2024. "The Political Effects of Immigration: Culture or Economics?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 62(1), pages 5-46, March.
    15. Federico S. Mandelman & Mehra dup Mishita & Hewei Shen, 2024. "Skilled Immigration Frictions as a Barrier for Young Firms," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2024-2, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    16. Shalise Ayromloo & Benjamin Feigenberg & Darren Lubotsky, 2020. "States Taking the Reins? Employment Verification Requirements and Local Labor Market Outcomes," NBER Working Papers 26676, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. Mette Foged & Giovanni Peri, 2016. "Immigrants' Effect on Native Workers: New Analysis on Longitudinal Data," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(2), pages 1-34, April.
    18. Agostina Brinatti & Nicolas Morales, 2021. "Firm Heterogeneity and the Impact of Immigration: Evidence from German Establishments," Working Paper 21-16, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.
    19. Pedro Carneiro & Kai Liu & Kjell G Salvanes, 2023. "The Supply of Skill and Endogenous Technical Change: Evidence from a College Expansion Reform," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 21(1), pages 48-92.
    20. Bächli, Mirjam & Tsankova, Teodora, 2020. "Free Movement of Workers and Native Demand for Tertiary Education," Other publications TiSEM 33968781-3521-459e-86c9-f, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    guest workers; migrants; employment; firm dynamics; H-2B visa;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
    • F22 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Migration
    • J61 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cen:wpaper:24-05. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Dawn Anderson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesgvus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.