Immigration, Working Conditions, and Compensating Differentials

Abstract

The large inflow of less-educated immigrants into the United States in recent decades may have affected US natives’ labor market outcomes in many ways, including their working conditions. Although the general consensus is that low-skilled immigrants tend to hold “worse” jobs than US natives, the impact of immigration on natives’ working conditions has received little attention. This study examines how immigration has affected US natives’ occupational exposure to workplace hazards and the compensating differential paid for such exposure from 1990 to 2018. Results indicate that immigration causes less-educated natives’ exposure to workplace hazards to fall, and instrumental variables results show a larger impact among women than among men. The corresponding compensating differential appears to fall among men, but not after accounting for immigration-induced changes in the financial returns to occupational skills.

Do immigrants shield the locals? Exposure to COVID‐related risks in the European Union

“…Bond et al (2020) find that immigration leads US natives to move away from shift work into daytime jobs. Orrenius and Zavodny (2009) and Sparber and Zavodny (2021) show that migration to the US leads less-educated native-born workers to move into jobs with less exposure to hazardous conditions, and that those effects are stronger for female native workers. D'Amuri and Peri (2014) and Foged and Peri (2016) extend the analysis for Europe, again presenting evidence that immigrants, by taking manual occupations, push natives towards more abstract and communication-intensive jobs.…”

“…Intense political debates and polarization on immigration partly fueled the rise of the right‐wing parties in Europe and the political controversies over the border wall or the Dream Act in the US. Despite these high‐profile examples of the popular and political backlash against immigration, the academic literature provides ample evidence on how immigrant workers often fill the difficult and dangerous jobs that locals are not willing to undertake (Orrenius & Zavodny, 2009, 2013; Sparber & Zavodny, 2021). As this article shows, COVID‐19 provides another example where immigrant workers are, in effect, “protecting” the native worker by virtue of taking on the jobs that turn out to be the riskiest during the pandemic.…”

Toward a new standard of health for immigrants in the United States

“…Moreover, important attention has been brought to the unequal distribution of workplace hazards, many of them borne out by immigrants. 1 In healthcare, for example, more than a quarter of US nurses who lost their lives due to COVID-19 were Filipino. 2 Furthermore, many meat processing plants that disproportionately rely on immigrant labor became sources of outbreak during the early pandemic in addition to preexisting occupational health hazards.…”

“…Workers in these industries, far from the “work-from-home” revolution, faced outbreaks and experienced occupational hazards that worsened during the pandemic. 1 , 12 , 13 The pandemic has also had a disproportionate effect on learning for immigrant youth given the linguistic barriers many immigrant families face, as well as the lack of workplace flexibility in many occupations disproportionately held by immigrants. 14 Far from being a hidden, peripheral, or unassimilable faction of the nation's workforce, immigrants have taken on a disproportionate share of essential labor.…”