Are Immigrants a Shot in the Arm for the Local Economy? / Gihoon Hong, John McLaren.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hong, Gihoon.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

McLaren, John.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w21123.

NBER working paper series no. w21123

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2015.

Summary:

Most research on the effects of immigration focuses on the effects of immigrants as adding to the supply of labor. By contrast, this paper studies the effects of immigrants on local labor demand, due to the increase in consumer demand for local services created by immigrants. This effect can attenuate downward pressure from immigrants on non-immigrants' wages, and also benefit non-immigrants by increasing the variety of local services available. For this reason, immigrants can raise native workers' real wages, and each immigrant could create more than one job. Using US Census data from 1980 to 2000, we find considerable evidence for these effects: Each immigrant creates 1.2 local jobs for local workers, most of them going to native workers, and 62% of these jobs are in non-traded services. Immigrants appear to raise local non-tradables sector wages and to attract native-born workers from elsewhere in the country. Overall, it appears that local workers benefit from the arrival of more immigrants.

Notes:

Print version record

April 2015.