September 22, 2006

George Borjas: "Immigration and African-American Employment Opportunities"

George Borjas of Harvard and others have a new paper discussing the titular subject. From the abstract:

The employment rate of black men, and particularly of low-skill black men, fell precipitously from 1960 to 2000. At the same time, the incarceration rate of black men rose markedly. This paper examines the relation between immigration and these trends in black employment and incarceration. Using data drawn from the 1960-2000 U.S. Censuses, we find a strong correlation between immigration, black wages, black employment rates, and black incarceration rates. As immigrants disproportionately increased the supply of workers in a particular skill group, the wage of black workers in that group fell, the employment rate declined, and the incarceration rate rose. Our analysis suggests that a 10-percent immigrant-induced increase in the supply of a particular skill group reduced the black wage by 3.6 percent, lowered the employment rate of black men by 2.4 percentage points, and increased the incarceration rate of blacks by almost a full percentage point.

Posted to Immigration at September 22, 2006 11:34 AM

Comments

The government would also know this, and the worst sort of power-seekers like nothing better than to pit racial and ethnic groups against each other even to the point of civil war. That's how you get dictatorship installed in a country which is resistant to it.

Posted by: John S Bolton at September 23, 2006 01:58 AM

Fascinating article from CIS below regarding the effect of illegal immigration on young workers. A very good time for this sort of information to come out.

http://www.cis.org/articles/2006/back806release.html

Posted by: D Flinchum at September 23, 2006 03:41 AM