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Title: High-Skilled Immigration and the Rise of STEM Occupations in US Employment
Citation Type: Miscellaneous
Publication Year: 2016
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Abstract: In this paper, we document the importance of high-skilled immigration for U.S. employment in STEM elds. To begin, we review patterns of U.S. employment in STEM occupations among workers with at least a college degree. These patterns mirror the cycle of boom and bust in the U.S. technology industry. Among younger workers, the share of hours worked in STEM jobs peaked around the year 2000, at the height of the dot-com bubble. STEM employment shares are just now approaching these previous highs. Next, we consider the importance of immigrant labor to STEM employment. Immigrants account for a disproportionate share of jobs in STEM occupations, in particular among younger workers and among workers with a master's degree or PhD. Foreign-born presence is most pronounced in computer-related occupations, such as software programming. The majority of foreign-born workers in STEM jobs arrived in the U.S. at age 21 or older. Although we do not know the visa history of these individuals, their age at arrival is consistent with the H-1B visa being an important mode of entry for highly trained STEM workers into the U.S. Finally, we examine wage dierences between native and foreignborn labor. Whereas foreign-born workers earn substantially less than native-born workers in non-STEM occupations, the native-foreign born earnings dierence in STEM jobs is economically much less signi cant. Further, foreign-born workers in STEM elds reach earnings parity with native workers much more quickly than they do in non-STEM elds. Whereas in non-STEM jobs, foreign-born workers require 20 years or more in the U.S. to reach earnings parity with natives, in STEM elds they achieve parity in less than a decade.
Url: http://gps.ucsd.edu/_files/faculty/hanson/hanson_publication_immigration_stem-employment.pdf
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Authors: Hanson, Gordon, H; Slaughter, Matthew, J
Publisher: UC San Diego and NBER
Data Collections: IPUMS USA
Topics: Education, Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Migration and Immigration, Race and Ethnicity
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