If “immigrants do jobs that Americans won't do”, there should be occupations in which the workers are overwhelmingly foreign-born. However, among hundreds of occupations identified by the Census Bureau, natives outnumber immigrants in all but a handful, and in none of them do illegal immigrants constitute a majority. The willingness of natives to work a broad range of jobs is even more apparent in low-immigration localities. “There are jobs Americans won’t do” is clearly not a strong argument for immigration.
Overall findings:
- Of the 525 civilian occupations identified in Census Bureau data, only five are majority immigrant (either legal or illegal) — with just one, “manicurists and pedicurists”, exceeding 60 percent.
- The five majority-immigrant occupations account for only 0.6 percent of the civilian U.S. workforce. Moreover, native-born Americans still comprise 40 percent of workers in these occupations.
- Many occupations often thought to be overwhelmingly foreign-born are in fact majority native-born:
- Maids and housekeepers: 51 percent native
- Construction laborers: 61 percent native
- Home health aides: 61 percent native
- Landscaping workers: 66 percent native
- Janitors: 71 percent native
- About half of agricultural workers are immigrants, but all agricultural workers — natives and immigrants together — constitute less than 1 percent of the U.S. workforce.
- There are 65 occupations in which 25 percent or more of the workers are immigrants. However, these occupations are still held by about one in every nine native-born workers — 16 million natives in total.
Illegal immigrants:
- There are no occupations in which illegal immigrants in the data constitute more than one-third of workers.
- Illegal immigrants work mostly in construction, maintenance, food service, and agriculture. However, the majority of workers even in these occupations are either native-born or legal immigrants.
Low-immigration metropolitan areas:
- The cities and surrounding suburbs of Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Richmond, Nashville, and Columbus are examples of relatively low-immigration areas with relatively high per capita incomes. In these places, the willingness of natives to work stereotypically immigrant jobs is even more apparent:
- Taxi drivers: 67 percent native
- Painters: 73 percent native
- Maids and housekeepers: 76 percent native
- Dishwashers: 87 percent native
- Janitors: 88 percent native
- Among the 431 occupations with sufficient data to analyze in these five low-immigration areas, just 13 are at least 25 percent immigrant.
Jason Richwine is a resident scholar at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, DC-based research institute that examines the impact of immigration on the United States. He has written and spoken widely on issues of labor economics, both for a technical audience and for the general public. His work has appeared in publications ranging from Public Administration Review and Brookings Institution Press to the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. He is also a regular contributor to National Review.
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