Full Citation
Title: Along the watchtower: The rise and fall of U.S. low-skilled immigration
Citation Type: Conference Paper
Publication Year: 2017
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Abstract: From the rhetoric during and since the 2016 presidential election, one would think that the United States continues to experience a surge of low-skilled immigration. Although in previous decades such labor inflows certainly occurred, since the Great Recession U.S. borders have become a far less active place when it comes to the net arrival of foreign labor. The number of undocumented immigrants has declined in absolute terms, while the overall population of low-skilled foreignborn workers has remained stable. In this paper, we examine how the scale and composition of low-skilled immigration in the United States has evolved over time and how relative income growth and demographic shifts in the Western Hemisphere have contributed to the recent immigration slowdown. Because major source countries for U.S. immigration are now seeing and will continue to see weak labor-supply growth relative to the United States, the future immigration of young low-skilled workers looks set to decline further, whether or not U.S. immigration policies take a more draconian turn.
Url: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/2_hansonetal.pdf
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Authors: Hanson, Gordon; Liu, Chen; McIntosh, Craig
Conference Name: BPEA Conference Drafts
Publisher Location: Washington D.C.
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Migration and Immigration
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