Economy
More Evidence That Immigrants Don't Steal American Jobs
Low-skilled native workers pursue very different jobs than their immigrant counterparts.
Economists tend to agree that immigration is good for the economy: immigrants create jobs and make U.S-born workers more prosperous. Opponents of this idea often cite the work of Harvard labor economist George Borjas to argue that, at the very least, low-skilled immigrants steal jobs that low-skilled Americans would normally do. Here’s The Atlantic’s David Frum fleshing out this critique:
The core of this argument relies on the assumption that similarly educated native-born and immigrant workers of the same age don’t take on complementary roles in the job market as economists suggest—but rather eye the same jobs. But a new analysis of Census data from the Urban Institute finds evidence to the contrary.