Study: Inmigration doesn't hurt pay of native-born workers

Washington, Feb 5 (EFE).- Immigration doesn't make workers born in the USA earn less, but rather this group, regardless of education level, has enjoyed a modest pay increase as a result of the new immigration, according to a new study.

Immigration and Wages, a research paper released Thursday by the Economic Policy Institute, concludes that over the long term, immigration has no overall impact on the average national wage.

Figures from the U.S. Department of Labor show, according to the report, that the arrival of 9.6 million immigrant workers between 1994 and 2007 increased by 0.4 percent ($3.68) the weekly pay of U.S.-born workers compared with that of the foreigners.

Nonetheless, the arrival of new immigrants did reduce by 4.6 percent ($33.11) the weekly pay of foreign-born U.S. workers relative to that of their native-born counterparts.

U.S.-born workers "typically do not compete head-to-head with immigrants for jobs," according to study, drafted by EPI economist Heidi Shierholz.

Those who do compete with each other are the new immigrants and workers born outside the United States, since both suffer similar handicaps in the job market including the problem of language, the report says.

Other conclusions of the study say that immigration moderately increases wages of U.S.-born men with post-secondary education.

Nonetheless, those who have only reached high-school level saw their income drop slightly, by 0.2 percent.

As for women of any educational level, their pay can go down or stay the same without being significantly affected.

Nonetheless, education and gender do have a notable influence on the entire group of foreign-born workers already in the United States.

Within that group, women without a high-school education suffered a wage cut of about 2.5 percent and those who have a university degree, of about 7.1 percent.

As for age, the study says that the youngest workers born in the United States, with from one to 10 years' working experience, showed a modest increase in pay thanks to immigration (0.8 percent) compared with foreign workers.

The trend is just the opposite among groups of workers with more work experience, who saw their wages drop by 0.3 percent compared with those born outside the country.

The impact of immigration on the four states with the most immigrant workers - California, Florida, New York and Texas - follows the same trend as the national average.

Even so, differences have been detected among subgroups, as is the case in California, where workers born in the U.S. without a high-school education showed a drop in their pay of 1.6 percent compared to workers born outside. Florida showed a contrary effect: native-born workers who didn't graduate from high school showed an increase of 1.2 percent.

"Americans are right to worry about the declining quality of jobs over the last few decades, but this report shows that, for native workers at all levels of education, immigration had very little to do with it," Shierholz said.

"Other factors, like employers' aggressive anti-union tactics, the declining purchasing power of the minimum wage, and unbalanced foreign trade are the real culprits behind broad-based declines in wages and job quality," the study's author said.