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Journal Article
Mexican migrants stay in border comfort zone
Limited access to migrant networks and strong geographic preferences may underlie border migrants' willingness to settle for lower wages on the border rather than seek higher wages by venturing into the U.S. interior.
Working Paper
Immigrants in the U.S. labor market
Immigrants supply skills that are in relatively short supply in the U.S. labor market and account for almost half of labor force growth since the mid-1990s. Migrant inflows have been concentrated at the low and high ends of the skill distribution. Large-scale unauthorized immigration has fueled growth of the low-skill labor force, which has had modest adverse fiscal and labor market effects on taxpayers and U.S.-born workers. High-skilled immigration has been beneficial in most every way, fueling innovation and spurring entrepreneurship in the high tech sector. Highly skilled immigrants have ...
Working Paper
Who Signs up for E-Verify? Insights from DHS Enrollment Records
E-Verify is a federal electronic verification system that allows employers to check whether their newly hired workers are authorized to work in the United States. To use E-Verify, firms first must enroll with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Participation is voluntary for most private-sector employers in the United States, but eight states currently require all or most employers to use E-Verify. This article uses confidential data from DHS to examine patterns of employer enrollment in E-Verify. The results indicate that employers are much more likely to sign up in mandatory E-Verify ...
Working Paper
Family structure and sex differences in postdisplacement outcomes
Labor force outcomes after an involuntary job loss tend to differ systematically between men and women, with women experiencing a lower probability of finding another job, a longer average duration of nonemployment, and larger losses in hours given reemployment. This study examines the role of family structure in such sex differences in postdisplacement outcomes. Data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics indicate that unmarried women have postdisplacement outcomes similar to men whereas married women?s outcomes differ considerably from those of men. The presence of children in the ...
Journal Article
Monetary policy and racial unemployment rates
When the Federal Open Market Committee began raising interest rates in June 1999 to forestall inflationary pressures, concern mounted that monetary policy moves might slow the pace of economic growth, undoing the employment gains minorities and other disadvantaged groups made during the 1990s. Implicit in such concern is the idea that these groups will be disproportionately affected by an economic slowdown. ; To explore this issue, this article analyzes the effect of exogenous movements in monetary policy and other macroeconomic variables on the overall and black unemployment rates. These ...
Working Paper
How do e-verify mandates affect unauthorized immigrant workers?
A number of states have adopted laws that require employers to use the federal government?s E-Verify program to check workers? eligibility to work legally in the United States. Using data from the Current Population Survey, this study examines whether such laws affect labor market outcomes among Mexican immigrants who are likely to be unauthorized. We find evidence that E-Verify mandates reduce average hourly earnings among likely unauthorized male Mexican immigrants while increasing labor force participation and employment among likely unauthorized female Mexican immigrants. In contrast, the ...
Working Paper
Self-selection among undocumented immigrants from Mexico
This paper examines the effect of changes in migration determinants on the skill level of undocumented immigrants from Mexico. The authors focus on the effect of changes in economic conditions, migrant networks, and border enforcement on the educational attainment of Mexican-born men who cross the border illegally. Although previous research indicates that illegal aliens from Mexico tend to be unskilled relative to U.S. natives and that economic conditions, networks, and border enforcement affect the size of illegal immigrant flows across the border, the interaction of these variables has not ...
Working Paper
Trends in poverty and inequality among Hispanics
Since the 1970s, the poverty rate has remained largely unchanged among Hispanics but has declined among non-Hispanic whites and blacks, particularly before the onset of the recent recession. The influx of large numbers of immigrants partially explains why poverty rates have not fallen over time among Hispanics> ; In 2009, Hispanics were more than twice as likely to be poor than non-Hispanic whites. Lower average English ability, low levels of educational attainment, part-time employment, the youthfulness of Hispanic household heads, and the 2007?09 recession are important factors that have ...
Working Paper
Does immigration affect wages? A look at occupation-level evidence
Previous research has reached mixed conclusions about whether higher levels of immigration reduce the wages of natives. This paper reexamines this question using data from the Current Population Survey and the Immigration and Naturalization Service and focuses on differential effects by skill level. Using occupation as a proxy for skill, we find that an increase in the fraction of workers in an occupation group who are foreign born tends to lower the wages of low-skilled natives?particularly after controlling for endogeneity?but does not have a negative effect among skilled natives.>
Journal Article
Texas' Latino pay gaps: taking a closer look
Latino workers in Texas are on the short end of two pay gaps. They earn substantially lower wages than the state's non-Hispanic white workers. They also earn less than Latinos working in other parts of the U.S.