Skilled Foreign Workers a Boon to Pay, Study Finds

Research Shows Immigration Benefits for U.S.-Born, College-Educated Employees

Click here to read the WSJ article by Josh Zumbrun and Matt Stiles. Excerpts:

"cities seeing the biggest influx of foreign-born workers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics—the so-called STEM professions—saw wages climb fastest for the native-born, college-educated population."

""A lot of people have the idea there is a fixed number of jobs," said one of the authors, Giovanni Peri of the University of California, Davis. "It's completely turned around.""

"Immigrants can boost the productivity of the overall economy, he said, "because then the pie grows and there are more jobs for other people as well and there's not a zero-sum trade-off between natives and immigrants.""

"a one-percentage-point increase in the share of workers in STEM fields raised wages for college-educated natives by seven to eight percentage points and wages of the noncollege-educated natives by three to four percentage points."

"Opponents of the H-1B program say that immigrants may not be needed to fill many STEM jobs and that wage gains in these fields could be stronger in the absence of immigrants.

"The argument that we have a shortage is hard to sustain when you look at how many people have STEM degrees," said Steve Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonprofit group that wants to reduce the flow of immigrants to the U.S. "Most people who get STEM degrees don't get STEM jobs."

The research attempts to isolate the cause and effect of a shift in the supply of immigrants—rather than increased demand by employers—by tallying how the number of skilled workers changed over time in each area."

"The findings suggest an influx of foreign workers wouldn't hurt wages for the existing workforce, and would raise pay in many cases. The study follows a long line of research supporting the argument that skilled immigrants would boost the U.S. economy."

""Even for computer programmers, immigration of more computer programmers can be a good thing," said Madeleine Sumption, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington. "Their skills are complementary. Clusters of highly skilled people can do better together than in isolation."

But the latest research doesn't resolve the debate for lower-skilled natives and immigrants. Previous research has suggested "immigration is better for high-skilled people than for lower-skilled people," Ms. Sumption said. "It's a very consistent finding that there's more risk of competition for jobs at the low-skilled level.""