The Myth of the Hardworking Immigrant
The image of the hardworking immigrant is one of the most enduring narratives of the American experience. Unfortunately, new research suggests this is more of a myth than reality.
And the reality means that the damage to workers at the lower-end of our economy is likely to intensify for years to come.
Most Americans believe that immigrants come to America to work. A 2021 survey by the pro-immigration Cato Institute found that 72 percent of Americans believe immigrants come to the United States to “find jobs and improve their lives.” Some immigration enthusiasts go even further, claiming that immigrants are a necessary revitalizing force for American labor.
“Immigrants—we get the job done” is the title of a popular song in the hit musical Hamilton. “I been scoping ya dudes, ya’ll ain’t been working like I do. I’ll outwork you, it hurts you.”
Not quite. An investigation by researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta shows that immigrants actually work less intensively than native counterparts—at least for the first several years after their arrival in the U.S.
Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, Lei Fang, Melinda Pitts, and Michael Sparks found that new immigrants exhibit significantly lower labor force participation rates and lower employment rates than native workers. Which is to say, they are less likely to be looking for work and less likely to actually hold a job. In addition, immigrants work fewer hours per year, fewer weeks per year, and fewer hours per week.
The researchers focused on workers without a college degree because most of the increase in recent “undocumented immigrants” fits that description. But their findings that immigrants “work less intensively” than natives remain consistent across the entire population of immigrants and regardless of Hispanic origin.
The pattern holds for prime age workers between the ages of 25 and 54 and older workers between 55 and 65. Even among the youngest workers, between 16 and 24, immigrants have significantly lower labor force participation. Along the other indicators, the pattern still holds but less so for young workers.
Is this a function of the work schedules of agricultural workers? It is possible that seasonal farm work, in which a lot of immigrant labor is employed, might result in fewer weeks worked. But the researchers found that excluding agricultural workers does not significantly change the pattern.
The good news is that over time immigrant work habits begin to mirror native work habits. After five years in the U.S., much of the difference is overcome. This suggests that rather than immigrants revitalizing American labor, the American labor force is assimilating foreign labor into our higher domestic standards.
A Ticking Time Bomb for Wages
This has implications for the economy in the near future. It means that the impact of the large inflows of immigrants during the Biden administration will become more intense over time. The findings “imply that the large inflows of immigrants since the pandemic will continue to weaken the labor market in the next few years as these immigrants will likely increase their labor supply gradually after arriving,” the Fed researchers write.
What this means is that the Biden immigration explosion, even if curtailed, will likely be a weight on wages, especially on Americans and immigrants with lower skill levels. The Biden-Harris administration’s claim to be building prosperity “from the bottom up” is belied by the lagged and building wage effects of their open borders policy.
These findings really should not be that surprising. The U.S. economy is particularly dynamic, and U.S. workers are some of the most productive and hardworking in the world. The Fed study indicates that it takes newcomers years to catch up with American standards.
