October 29, 2010 Immigrants Benefit as Economy Recovers [From WSJ by Jihwan Kim]

Immigrants Benefit as Economy Recovers .

 

By MIRIAM JORDAN

For Gustavo Torres, head of an immigrant employment center near Washington, D.C., the uptick in the economy is measured by the surge in demand for his blue-collar workers, who hail mainly from Latin America and Africa.

 

"The recovery is working for our community," said Mr. Torres, executive director of Casa de Maryland, which boasts five job centers in the state. "It's unbelievable how many jobs are becoming available."

 

In the year that ended June 2010, Casa placed 19,000 immigrants in jobs, compared with 16,000 in the year-earlier period.

 

A new study released Friday by the Pew Hispanic Center confirms that immigrants are benefiting before native-born workers from the slow-paced economic recovery.

 

Foreigners gained 656,000 jobs in the first year following the official end of the recession in June 2009. Native-born workers lost 1.2 million jobs, according to an analysis of government data by Pew, a nonpartisan research group.

 

As a result, the unemployment rate for immigrant workers fell to 8.7% from 9.3% between June 2009 and June 2010. For native-born workers, the rate rose to 9.7% from 9.2%.

 

"The bottom line is simple: There is a substantial difference in how economic recovery is working for native-born and foreign-born workers," said Rakesh Kochhar, Pew's associate director of research. "For the native born, you see ongoing discouragement in their job search."

 

The study—based on analysis of the Current Population Survey, conducted jointly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau—also reveals that a greater proportion of working-age immigrants, 16 years and older, were employed recently than last year—62.3% in June 2010, compared with 61.7% in June 2009. In contrast, the share of employed native-born workers shrunk: 58.3% in June 2010 compared to 59.3% in June 2009.

 

Immigrant presence in the U.S. labor force has been increasing for several decades, with foreign-born workers now representing 16% of the U.S. labor force, up from 10% in 1995.

 

As the economy improves, foreign-born workers have taken different sorts of jobs than those available at the height of the economic boom, when more than half their job gains were in construction.During the recovery, more immigrants have taken jobs in hospital services, education and other sectors, the Pew report notes.

 

"For many immigrants, sending money back to their home country is a key part of working here," says Mr. Kochhar. "This makes them more open to doing different jobs."

 

Immigrants also tend to be more flexible about their wage expectations and more mobile than native-born workers.

 

From 2009 to 2010, the median weekly earnings of foreign-born workers slipped 4.5% to $525 compared with a loss of less than 1% for native-born workers to $653, according to the Pew study.

 

In addition, immigrants working in the U.S. illegally are more likely to take jobs for lower wages than during the economic boom because they aren't eligible to receive unemployment benefits.

 

Despite the brighter prospects, the job recovery for immigrants is far from complete.

 

The 656,000 jobs gained by immigrants in the first year since the end of the recession still weren't enough to compensate for the 1.1 million jobs they lost the previous year. And the unemployment rate for immigrants is still more than double the rate that it was before the onset of the recession.

 

Write to Miriam Jordan at miriam.jordan@wsj.com