A recent study by the Center for Immigration Studies found that immigrants are replacing low-skilled native-born men in the workforce. The study shows a significant decline in hours worked from 2003-2015 for native born workers while it has increased for immigrant workers in the same category.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center, said, "Low-skill American men have been dropping out of the labor force at the same time that low-skill immigrants are finding plenty of work. Whatever its other effects, mass immigration serves to paper over this serious social problem, reducing the incentive for employers and policymakers to explore and address its underlying causes.”
The results of the study are based on the numbers of hours worked, not just labor participation rates, of immigrants with less than a high school degree compared to prime age native-born men, who have less than a high school degree and who are not incarcerated.
The key findings of the study are:
- Among natives without a high school degree, the fraction who were neither working nor looking for work rose from 26 percent in 1994 to 35 percent in 2015. Over the same period, the fraction of their immigrant counterparts who were out of the labor force actually declined from 12 percent to 8 percent.
- Turning to hours spent working, native-born high school dropouts worked an average of 1,391 hours (the equivalent of about 35 full-time weeks) per year between 2003 and 2015, while immigrant dropouts worked 1,955 hours (or 49 full-time weeks) per year.
- Native-born dropouts have seen their work time decline from 41 equivalent full-time weeks in the 2003-2005 period to 32 weeks in 2012-2015, while immigrant dropouts declined only from 52 weeks to 50 weeks.
- While natives fell from 56 percent of the nation's high school dropouts to 52 percent, their share of the labor performed by all dropouts declined much faster — from 50 percent in the 2003-2005 period to 40 percent in 2012-2015.
Read the full study at CIS.org.
