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Declining immigration weighs on GDP growth, with little impact on inflation
Unauthorized immigration surged sharply in 2021–24 but has since declined abruptly with negative implications for economic growth. Estimates based on historical data and a structural vector autoregression model suggest gross domestic product growth in 2025 is 0.75 to 1 percentage points lower than in a benchmark simulation using the Congressional Budget Office’s immigration projections through November 2024.
Journal Article
Getting to the bottom of Texas' Latino pay gap
Among Latinos, the U.S. born make up a majority in Texas but a minority in the rest of the country. Because natives typically earn more than immigrants, a state with a large, established population of U.S.-born Latinos might be expected to have relatively high Latino wages. That's not the case in Texas. The Latino wage gap--the difference between the wages of Latinos and non-Hispanic whites--is significantly larger in Texas than in the rest of the nation. ; What drives the gap in Texas? To find out, we look at Latinos' recent contributions to the state's labor force and trends in their wages ...
Texas natives likeliest to ‘stick’ around, pointing to state’s economic health
Based on a calculation measuring the share of people born in each state who still live there, Texas is the nation’s “stickiest” state. The natives aren’t leaving.
Working Paper
Irregular immigration in the European Union
Unauthorized immigration is on the rise again in the EU. Although precise estimates are hard to come by, proximity to nations in turmoil and the promise of a better life have drawn hundreds of thousands of irregular migrants to the EU in 2014-2015. Further complicating the ongoing challenge is the confounding flow of humanitarian migrants, who are fleeing not for a job but for their lives. Those who flee for better economic conditions are irregular migrants, not humanitarian migrants, but the lines between the two are often blurred. This policy brief surveys the state of irregular immigration ...
Working Paper
How do e-verify mandates affect unauthorized immigrant workers?
A number of states have adopted laws that require employers to use the federal government?s E-Verify program to check workers? eligibility to work legally in the United States. Using data from the Current Population Survey, this study examines whether such laws affect labor market outcomes among Mexican immigrants who are likely to be unauthorized. We find evidence that E-Verify mandates reduce average hourly earnings among likely unauthorized male Mexican immigrants while increasing labor force participation and employment among likely unauthorized female Mexican immigrants. In contrast, the ...
Journal Article
Unions and the wage-productivity gap
Although both real wages and productivity have been growing at relatively slow rates during the last two decades, some measures indicate that earnings have failed to keep up with productivity growth. The slowdown in real wage growth is important to workers and their families because their purchasing power is not rising if earnings are not increasing faster than prices. The failure of growth in real wages to match productiv-ity gains also has critical implications for workers. ; A substantial decline in the unionization rate since the 1960s has been cited as underlying the wage-productivity ...
Working Paper
Hispanics in the U.S. Labor Market: A Tale of Three Generations
Immigrants? descendants typically assimilate toward mainstream social and economic outcomes across generations. Hispanics in the United States are a possible exception to this pattern. Although there is a growing literature on intergenerational progress, or lack thereof, in education and earnings among Hispanics, there is little research on employment differences across immigrant generations. Using data from 1996 to 2017, this study reveals considerable differences in Hispanics? employment rates across immigrant generations. Hispanic immigrant men tend to have higher employment rates than ...
Journal Article
Limited English skills, relative youth contribute to Hispanic poverty rates
The Hispanic population?s well-being plays an increasingly important role in regional and national economic prosperity. Hispanic workers? skills and education will help determine the future productivity of the labor force and competitiveness of U.S. industry.
Journal Article
Preface: Technology, growth, and the labor market
In recent years, economic prognosticators have pondered whether the U.S. economy has entered a new era characterized by technological innovations that have raised productivity and, accordingly, removed pricing power from producers. Although the 2001 recession quelled debate about whether the United States, and perhaps the world, had entered a period of sustained high levels of economic growth, researchers continue to investigate the economic effects of technological change. ; This issue of the Economic Review contains four articles that examine the underpinnings of the "new ...
Working Paper
Can Creating Legal Pathways Reduce Unauthorized Immigration? Evidence from the CHNV Parole Program
In an attempt to reduce unauthorized entries into the United States, the Biden administration created humanitarian parole programs for migrants from several countries experiencing crises. Migrants with a U.S. sponsor could apply from abroad and, if approved, were allowed to enter the country and remain for up to two years. Under the CHNV program, over 530,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela were paroled into the U.S. between late 2022 and mid-2024. Synthetic difference-in-differences models indicate a sustained drop in unauthorized attempted crossings between ports of entry ...