Immigration Effect on Jobs

Stuart Silverstein performed one of the best reporting jobs yet in American journalism in seeking to find the effects of historically high immigration on U.S. lower-skilled workers (Nov. 15).

After noting some of the competitive problems for native black workers, however, he needlessly adds confusion through what seems to be a contradictory note by citing a study that found “blacks actually fare better economically in regions with lots of immigrants.” The flaw of the study is that it fails to account for the fact that blacks and other native workers already had higher relative wages in those cities before the masses of immigrants concentrated there the past three decades. During the period of lower immigration from 1925 to 1965, blacks fled the low-wage South into high-wage New York City and Los Angeles, for example. So, it is not surprising that blacks in those cities still have higher wages. The important question concerns the recent trends of those wages during the high immigration since 1965.

That question was explored in the Economic Geography journal this year. Three scholars compared wage trends in high-immigration cities with those in low-immigration cities. The Walker-Ellis-Barff findings were dramatic: The average wage increase (not factored for inflation) in high-immigration cities lagged 26% behind the average U.S. city, and 48% behind low-immigration cities. Wages are still higher in Los Angeles, for example, than in most of the country, but much less so than before high immigration resumed. In terms of wage increases, Los Angeles lagged 31% behind Birmingham, Ala., and 47% behind Pittsburgh, Penn., two of the low-immigration cities studied. Those are the trends that caused so many of the natives interviewed by Silverstein to feel they were losing ground.

The Walker-Ellis-Barff study was for the 1970-78 period. The scholars now are studying wage trends in the 1980s, when immigration was far higher. Their findings thus far give a solid explanation for the phenomenon discovered by University of Michigan population scholars who note that wage-earner blacks and whites are moving in significant numbers from high-immigration cities such as Los Angeles to areas where wages are not being depressed, apparently, by immigrant worker competition.

ROY BECK

Washington Editor

The Social Contract