Michael E. Hurst - The Assimilation of Immigrants in the U.S. Labor Market: Employment and Labor Force Turnover

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GARLAND STUDIES IN
THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN LABOR

edited by
STUART BRUCHEY
ALLAN NEVINS PROFESSOR EMERITUS
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

A GARLAND SERIES

The Assimilation of Immigrants in the U.S. Labor Market

Employment and Labor Force Turnover

Michael E. Hurst

Copyright 1998 Michael E. Hurst
All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Hurst, Michael E., 1952
The assimilation of immigrants in the U.S. labor market : employment and labor force turnover / Michael E. Hurst.
p. cm. (Garland studies in the history of American labor)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-8153-3225-4 (alk. paper)
1. Alien laborUnited States. 2. Labor turnoverUnited States. 3. Assimilation (Sociology)United States. I. Title. II. Series.
HD8081.A5H87 1998
331.6'2'0973dc21

98-37496

Contents

1. i

Guide

This book is essentially a revision of my doctoral dissertation, which was completed in May, 1997, The most important factors contributing to this book were my committee members, who were invaluable for their helpful suggestions and comments. I'd like to thank: Richard E. Barrett for his unique sociological perspectives and expertise with U.S. Census data; Cannella U. Chiswick for her initial guidance and her instruction on proper research design; and Houston H, Stokes for teaching me the econometric skills I needed for the analysis. I'd especially like to thank Evelyn L. Lehrer for her careful reading of earlier drafts, and for holding my feet to the fire on many important technical points.

This book would not have been possible without the suggestions of Barry R. Chiswick, as well as his insightful comments on the various drafts. Beyond that, however, I owe Dr. Chiswick a world of gratitude for the knowledge I have gained in working with him over the past few years. His support, guidance, and mentoring were critical for my completion of the book.

I appreciate the support of the graduate college for helping me present my early results at various conferences and the UIC Scholarship Association for the various invaluable awards and financial support I received through the years, which made it possible for me to do my research.

I'd like to thank Professor Ann Merle Feldman for her proofreading efforts and other writing advice, as well as her patience, support, and friendship. I'd like to thank my family for all of their support and encouragement. I especially appreciate my mother waiting patiently so long for her son to become a doctor. And I want to acknowledge the sacrifices made by my two lovely daughters, Taprine and Briana, in putting up with me through the whole process.

Although this book benefited from contributions from many quarters, any errors of omission or commission in gathering the data or analyzing the results are strictly my own.

The Assimilation of Immigrants in the U.S. Labor Market

Chapter 1
Introduction

The immigration of foreign-born persons into the United States has become a topic of increasing interest since passage of the Immigration Act in 1965, and has taken on an almost urgent tone since the passage of California's Proposition 187 in 1994. Proposition 187 and subsequent provisions in the welfare reform bill passed by the U.S. Congress in 1996 prohibit non-emergency public benefits to illegal immigrants, and will have an important impact on legal immigrants as well. Proposed legislation in the U.S Congress would further cut public assistance to many legal immigrants.

One of the public's concerns about immigrants is their economic adjustment process after they arrive in the United States. One hypothesis argues that immigrants arrive with disadvantages relative to the native-born population but acquire skills over time and eventually converge in earnings and other labor market outcomes to the levels of the native born, even surpassing the native born in many cases. An alternative viewpoint argues that the skills of immigrants have been decreasing in recent decades, which will lead to slower and less complete assimilation.

This book focuses on the labor market processes and outcomes of foreign-born persons in the United States, such as unemployment, quit rates, job finding rates, and rates of leaving the labor force. One of the major implications of the assimilation hypothesis is that immigrants acquire skill by experiencing many employersthus the labor market experience of recently migrated foreign-born persons is hypothesized to be characterized by many short spells of unemployment. This model is compatible with frictional, or turnover, models of unemployment. An alternative, "lack of jobs" model argues that most unemployment is concentrated in relatively few individuals with long spells. The higher rate of unemployment and fewer weeks worked for foreign-born persons compared to native-born persons could be compatible with either the turnover or lack of jobs models. A third model could also explain higher rates of unemployment and lower weeks worked for recent migrantshigher unemployment may be the result of a large pool entering the U.S. labor force for the first time prior to obtaining employment, and lower weeks worked could be the result of higher rates for recent immigrants of being out of the labor force.

Reconciling these differences is a primary goal of this book. The theoretical foundation is a combination of immigration hypotheses and theories of labor turnover, prime among which are search models. The database is a pooled cross-section time series assembled from various supplements to the Current Population Survey plus the 1976 Survey of Income and Education. Tests are run on various determinants of relative differences in quit rates, layoff rates, job finding rates, and entry and exit from the labor force. Key among the explanatory variables is the duration of time in the U.S. of foreign-born men, as well as a series of socio-economic and demographic variables.

summarizes and discusses the results.

Immigration has been an important public policy issue since before the passage of the Alien and Sedition Act of 1789, although its importance peaked and ebbed periodically through the 18th and 19th centuries. Between 1875 and 1965 immigration policy was based on the exclusion of "undesirables," defined primarily by country of origin (Cafferty, 1984). Much of the debate on immigration has been fomented by "waves" of mass immigration: 1830s-1860s, 1860s-1880s, 1880s-1890s, 1901-1914 (Briggs, 1992). Exclusionary legislation in the 1920s and during the Great Depression drastically reduced immigration until the 1960s, although mass migration of U.S. blacks from southern rural areas to the north has been considered as another great "wave" (Muller, 1985).

There are four main reasons that the immigrant issue has grown in importance recently. The first is an increase in the flow of legal immigration and in the stock of legal immigrants. Inflows of immigrants began to increase after World War II, accelerated in the mid 1960s and again in the late 1970s; in 1992 over 800,000 immigrants were legally admitted for permanent resident status into the United States, not counting those legalized under the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 (Fix and Passel, 1994). In 1990 the U.S. Census counted almost 20 million foreign-born residents, the highest in absolute numbers in U.S. history. About 40% of current U.S. population growth can be attributed to persons born outside the United States.

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