Full Citation

Title: Immigrant Wage Growth in the United States: The Role of Occupational Upgrading

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2017

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Abstract: Immigrants to the United States routinely take jobs below their skill qualifications because of barriers to entering occupations. Policies to assist immigrants in overcoming such barriers are costly, and the benefits have not been evaluated. We quantify the benefits of potential policies to promote US immigrants entry into suitable occupations. To do this, we create a model in which workers search over occupations, and estimate it using representative labor market data on immigrants to the US. Our counterfactual results show that eliminating barriers to occupational entry would lead to only a small earnings increase for the average immigrant in our sample. We do see, however, a substantial earnings increase for highly skilled immigrants, suggesting that this type of policy would only benefit those with the highest skills.

Url: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f8bd/5a8c8d45c2e469a7d891b69e1d7ec4cc698d.pdf

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Authors: Lessem, Rebecca; Sanders, Carl

Publisher: Washington University in St. Louis

Data Collections: IPUMS CPS

Topics: Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Migration and Immigration

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