Arbeitspapier
Task Specialization, Immigration, and Wages
Many workers with low levels of educational attainment immigrated to the United States in recent decades. Large inflows of less-educated immigrants would reduce wages paid to comparably-educated native-born workers if the two groups are perfectly substitutable in production. In a simple model exploiting comparative advantage, however, we show that if less-educated foreign and native-born workers specialize in performing different tasks, immigration will cause natives to reallocate their task supply, thereby reducing downward wage pressure. We merge occupational task-intensity data from the O*NET and DOT datasets with individual Census data across US states from 1960-2000 to demonstrate that foreign-born workers specialize in occupations that require manual and physical labor skills while natives pursue jobs more intensive in communication and language tasks. Immigration induces natives to specialize accordingly. Simulations show that this increased specialization might explain why economic analyses commonly find only modest wage and employment consequences of immigration for less-educated native-born workers across U.S. states. This is especially true in states with large immigration flows.
- Sprache
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Englisch
- Erschienen in
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Series: CReAM Discussion Paper Series ; No. 02/08
- Klassifikation
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Wirtschaft
International Migration
Geographic Labor Mobility; Immigrant Workers
Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials
General Equilibrium and Welfare Economic Analysis of Regional Economies
- Thema
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Immigration
Less-Educated Labor
Manual Tasks
Communication Skills
Comparative Advantages
US States
- Ereignis
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Geistige Schöpfung
- (wer)
-
Peri, Giovanni
Sparber, Chad
- Ereignis
-
Veröffentlichung
- (wer)
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Centre for Research & Analysis of Migration (CReAM), Department of Economics, University College London
- (wo)
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London
- (wann)
-
2008
- Letzte Aktualisierung
-
10.03.2025, 11:43 MEZ
Datenpartner
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Objekttyp
- Arbeitspapier
Beteiligte
- Peri, Giovanni
- Sparber, Chad
- Centre for Research & Analysis of Migration (CReAM), Department of Economics, University College London
Entstanden
- 2008