Native Wages Research Articles

Immigration and Natives’ Wages: Understanding Their Correlation in the 1980s

Major papers on immigration’s wage impacts in the 1980s concluded that immigration into the U.S. modestly reduced the wages of natives. Authors based these conclusions on fixed-effects models that controlled for area-specific shocks. Without those fixed effects, however, these authors found positive correlations between immigration and wages. This study examines two specific shocks that might explain this counterintuitive result: changes in the industry structure of labor demand and differences in inflation rates among metropolitan areas. The study finds no evidence that the first shock matters for understanding immigration, but finds that a large proportion of the positive correlation between immigration and wages disappears if one controls for differences in inflation rates.

Macroeconomic equilibrium with illegal immigration

Illegal immigration (ILM) has been analyzed very little in the context of a macroeconomic framework. This paper introduces immigration of illegal unskilled workers into a simple model of an open economy with heterogeneous labor and, within this context, examines its macroeconomic and welfare consequences. The analysis shows that when skilled native wage setters and the policymakers behave as Nash players, ILM improves the position of the entire native labor force, i.e. both skilled and unskilled workers. Moreover, it reduces the inflationary bias associated with expansionary policies and thus has a positive overall impact on ‘social welfare’ in the economy. This result contrasts with several earlier studies that suggest that illegal immigration causes the position of at least some members of an economy to worsen. It also provides one possible macroeconomic explanation as to why illegal immigrants are currently tolerated in ‘inflation prone’ countries despite the fact that their presence sometimes causes social tensions. On the other hand, when native skilled workers and the policymakers behave cooperatively, ILM may in fact make the entire native workforce worse off. This result suggests that countries with ‘aggressive’ unions in skilled labor markets stand to gain from illegal immigration while countries with ‘soft’ unions may lose. Finally, it is shown that domestic labor market conditions determine the ‘optimum’ degree of government intervention in the illegal migrant labor market.

Out of the Woods: Tsimshian Women and Forestry Work

T story of work on the west coast of Canada has traditionally been one of rugged (white) men in fish-boats, mines and forests. The experiences of Aboriginal peoples as laborers and producers in resource industries have rarely been the focus of mainstream historical accounts (Knight 1996: 5). While such gaps in historical and ethographic records are being tackled by contemporary scholars, many of the less conspicuous stories of resource work in British Columbia remain untold. Recent research has tended to focus on Native men's experiences as fishers (Menzies 1992, Stevens 1992) and on Native women's wage labor in salmon canneries (Newell 1993, Muszynski 1992). Aboriginal women's long and complex history of involvement with the forest industry in British Columbia remains largely unexplored. In this article we will discuss some of the key social and economic processes at work during the colonization and industrialization of western Canada that have affected Aboriginal women's involvement in the forestry industry. The experiences of women of the Tsimshian Nation on the north coast of British Columbia offer a case study that spans over a century and a half of involvement in forestry work. In this case study we describe an alternative, gendered history of forestry and also highlight the forces working to dispossess Aboriginal peoples and, specifically, to disadvantage Aboriginal women. Tsimshian women's early involvement as laborers and producers, and their subsequent exclusion from both wage work and independent harvesting, illuminates the way that colonialism and capitalism have cooperated in the economic marginalization of Aboriginal women. Drawing from archival sources and life history interviews, Tsimshian women's involvement with commercial forestry is traced from the establishment of a Hudson Bay trading post in Tsimshian territory in 1834 until the present time. The exclusion of women from forestry, coincident with the shift from an Aboriginal economy to industrial resource extraction, will be related to the social and economic changes encouraged by church and state and dictated by the needs of capital. The shifting position of Aboriginal women in the resource

Do Immigrants Compete with Natives?

The paper analyses the impact of foreign workers on the Italian labour market. We address the issue of whether immigrants from less developed countries are complementary or substitutes to domestic workers. We construct a data set on immigrant workers from the Administrative Social Security Archive which starts in 1986, before the general amnesty of 1990–91, when a large share of illegal immigrants were granted working permits, and end in 1995. A two‐stage procedure devised by Moulton is applied to yearly cross‐sections of wages by industry and region. Our results show that the inflow of immigrants raises the wages of native manual workers (i.e. it has a complementary effect), and this effect is larger in small firms and in the north of the country. We postulate that the positive impact on native wages is due to the existence of labour constraints on the side of firms. Firms are unable to expand their output because they cannot find native workers who are willing to undertake certain (typically low‐skilled) jobs. Immigrants help to fill this gap. This view is reinforced by the fact that over a ‘crucial threshold’ of the share of foreign work (7.7–12 percent) additional inflows in the labour market of foreign work have a negative effect on native wages (i.e. they compete with natives).

Assessing the Effect of the Occupational Crowding of Immigrants on the Real Wages of African American Workers

The recurring importance of the immigration issue has spurred renewed research interests to determine what impact immigration has on domestic labor markets—particularly the labor markets of unskilled workers. This chapter focuses on research that has analyzed the wage effects of immigration at a point in time. There have been a number of studies that have analyzed immigration and indigenous wages. T. J. Espenshade provides evidence on the impact of immigration on native wages in different geographical locations and industries around the United States. The chapter examines the effects of immigration on the real wages of black workers by utilizing an untapped data source: the 1990 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. It utilizes the concept of occupational crowding as the focal point of the inquiry. The primary effort is to investigate the effect that the occupational crowding of immigrants has on the real wages of blacks in the domestic labor market.

IMMIGRATION AND THE EARNINGS OF YOUNG NATIVE WORKERS

This paper studies the impact of increased immigration in Austria on the wages of young native blue collar workers. We find that in regions, industries, or firms with a larger foreign share, Austrians earn higher wages. With respect to the impact of changes in the immigrant share on wage growth, the results are mixed. We develop a simple bargaining model which is consistent with these surprising results. IMMIGRATION policy has become a hotly debated issue in most Western European countries. With the fall of the Iron Curtain the possibility of mass migration from Russia and other former communist countries alarmed politicians and laymen alike. One of the main arguments for restricting legal immigration is the fear that immigrants might have a negative impact on labour market prospects of natives.' This distinctive public opinion contrasts sharply with widely acknowledged economic evidence. The usual economic apparatus for analysing this question is a production framework. A growing number of immigrants with given qualifications raises the supply of this particular labour input. Depending upon the patterns of substitutability or complementarity in the production process, demand for native workers may fall or rise. Empirically, it is useful to separate different groups of native workers. Due to the limited transferability of skills, it can be assumed that immigrant labour is at least initially less skilled than native labour. Therefore, it can be argued that immigrants should compete on the labour market mostly with unskilled blue-collar workers, whereas complementarity can rather be assumed between skilled white-collar workers and aliens. In recent years several studies investigated the US experience in the 1970s and the 1980s. Using regional variation in the labour supply of foreign workers, they indicate that the impact on native wages attributable to an increase in the supply of immigrants is numerically small. For an increase of 10% in the size of the immigrant population, different studies calculate a change in natives' earnings between -0.3 and +0.5%.2 These results refer to different native sub-samples, where the most significant negative impact of recent immigrants was found among earlier immigrant cohorts of the same ethnicity or black

Unskilled labor and wage determination: an empirical investigation for Germany.

"This article contributes to the ongoing debate on native wage impacts of immigration. I propose a mobile-fixed factor distinction as a framework in which to think about the differential impact of immigration on various labor market groups. Skilled workers are treated as a fixed factor of production since the strong reliance on skill certification in Germany inhibits mobility and shelters from competition. Unskilled workers, in contrast, receive competitive wages. Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel for 1984-1989 I estimate panel wage regressions for groups of workers separated by skill certification. I find that university graduates' wages increase, and the wages of workers without postsecondary degree decrease, as the industry share of unskilled workers increases. The effect for apprentices is ambiguous."

On‐the‐Job Training, Immigration Reform, and the True Wages of Native Male Workers

This study measures the Immigration Reform and Control Act's (IRCA) impact on the “true” earnings of native workers. True earnings include observed wages and compensation received in the form of on‐the‐job training (OJT). Using 1983–1992 NLSY data, we present evidence suggesting IRCA reduced the true wages of male natives most likely to be mistaken as unauthorized. Our findings suggest that Mexican Americans suffered the largest decline in post‐IRCA OJT. It appears then that antidiscrimination policies following recent immigration reform have not fully protected some U.S. natives against unintended IRCA‐related employment discrimination.

Native Wage Labour and Independent Production during the 'Era of Irrelevance'

THE DEBATE over the inherent right of native self-government has been largely confined the concept of political autonomy. As University of Lethbridge sociologist Menno Boldt reminds us in Surviving as Indians, meaningful political autonomy can only be realized once the economic dependence of native peoples on welfare has been addressed. The historical origins of this dependency have remained obscure because the study of Amerindian history is a relatively recent phenomenon in Canada. Pioneered by anthropologists, the study of native peoples' has been joined by many disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. Research has tended focus upon the early contact period, the central role of the Amerindian in the fur trade, and the evolution of relations between Amerindians and the state. Until recently, historians have assumed that the importance of natives in the New World economy did not survive the decline of the fur trade in the mid 19th Consequently, there has been little interest among historians in exploring the nature and extent of Amerindian participation in the emerging capitalist economy. As J.R. Miller so aptly observed in Skyscrapers Hide the Heavens, only in World War n did Amerindians begin to move out of an 'era of irrelevance' in which they had been cast by the majority population in the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, the perceived irrelevance of native peoples in the post fur-trade era has extended the historiography itself. As a result, the experience of Amerindians, during a

The Impact of Immigrants on Host Country Wages, Employment and Growth

The popular belief that immigrants have a large adverse impact on the wages and employment opportunities of the native-born population of the receiving country is not supported by the empirical evidence. A 10 percent increase in the fraction of immigrants in the population reduces native wages by 0-1 percent. Even those natives who are the closest substitutes with immigrant labor do not suffer significantly as a result of increased immigration. There is no evidence of economically significant reductions in native employment. The impact on natives’ per capita income growth depends crucially on the immigrants’ human capital levels.

Native wage impacts of foreign labor: a random effects panel analysis.

"In this paper, we explore the...issue of how wages are affected [by foreign labor] using a vast panel data set for West Germany.... The paper provides evidence that foreigners affect the wages of low-qualified and high-qualified Germans. While relatively small gains are made by white collar employees with less than 20 years experience, these are outweighed by the larger wage reductions experienced by blue collar employees."

The Size and Structure of Native-White Wage Differentials in Canada

The labor market behavior of aboriginal Canadians has been little studied by economists. This paper establishes some basic empirical regularities concerning the wages of natives in Canada, applying techniques drawn from the earnings function literature to the Statistics Canada 1986 Census Public Use Sample Tape. The raw wage gap between aboriginal and white Canadians is relatively small compared with that of other disadvantaged groups in North America, and it is smaller for women than for males. Differences in observable characteristics such as education, language, and region account for as much as 50 percent of the overall white-native wage gap.

Native wages and standard of living in Northern Rhodesia

Native wages and standard of living in Northern Rhodesia