scholarly journals Immigration System, Labor Market Structures, and Overeducation of High-Skilled Immigrants in the United States and Canada

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 1072-1103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yao Lu ◽  
Feng Hou
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
The United States ◽  
Point System ◽  
Market Demand ◽  
Market Outcomes ◽  
Skilled Immigrants ◽  
Market Structures ◽  
National Differences

Why do high-skilled Canadian immigrants lag behind their US counterparts in labor-market outcomes, despite Canada’s merit-based immigration selection system and more integrative context? This article investigates a mismatch between immigrants’ education and occupations, operationalized by overeducation, as an explanation. Using comparable data and three measures of overeducation, we find that university-educated immigrant workers in Canada are consistently much more likely to be overeducated than their US peers and that the immigrant–native gap in the overeducation rate is remarkably higher in Canada than in the United States. This article further examines how the cross-national differences are related to labor-market structures and selection mechanisms for immigrants. Whereas labor-market demand reduces the likelihood of immigrant overeducation in both countries, the role of supply-side factors varies: a higher supply of university-educated immigrants is positively associated with the likelihood of overeducation in Canada, but not in the United States, pointing to an oversupply of high-skilled immigrants relative to Canada’s smaller economy. Also, in Canada the overeducation rate is significantly lower for immigrants who came through employer selection (i.e., those who worked in Canada before obtaining permanent residence) than for those admitted directly from abroad through the point system. Overall, the findings suggest that a merit-based immigration system likely works better when it takes into consideration domestic labor-market demand and the role of employer selection.

Development of the Medical Interpreting Profession in the US

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Holly M. Mikkelson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
The United States ◽  
Role Of Government ◽  
The Us ◽  
Medical Interpreters ◽  
Medical Interpreting ◽  
Further Development

This chapter traces the development of the medical interpreting profession in the United States as a case study. It begins with the conception of interpreters as volunteer helpers or dual-role medical professionals who happened to have some knowledge of languages other than English. Then it examines the emergence of training programs for medical interpreters, incipient efforts to impose standards by means of certification tests, the role of government in providing language access in health care, and the beginning of a labor market for paid medical interpreters. The chapter concludes with a description of the current situation of professional medical interpreting in the United States, in terms of training, certification and the labor market, and makes recommendations for further development.

Labor Market Outcomes of Immigrant Women in the United States: 1970 to 1990

1998 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert F. Schoeni
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Wage Gap ◽  
Immigrant Women ◽  
Labor Market Outcomes ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Philippines ◽  
Market Outcomes ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Almost All

Forty-two percent of immigrant workers in the United States are women, yet almost all of the evidence on the economic performance of immigrants is based on analyses of men. This study begins to fill the void by examining differences in a wide array of labor market outcomes between U.S.-born and immigrant women, and among immigrant women born in different countries or regions of the world, using the 1970, 1980 and 1990 censuses. Immigrant women were less likely to participate in the labor force, and this gap increased to 7 percentage points by 1990. However, the share of self-employed and the number of weeks and hours worked among employed women were roughly the same for immigrants and natives throughout the 1970–1990 period. The gap in unemployment and weekly wages widened in favor of natives between 1970 and 1990, with a gap in median wages of 14 percent in 1990. However, immigrants born in the United Kingdom and Canada, Europe, Japan, Korea, China, the Philippines, and the Middle East have had steady or improved wages and unemployment relative to U.S.-born women. At the same time, immigrants from Mexico and Central America, who now represent one-quarter of all immigrant women, have experienced relatively high unemployment and low earnings, and these differences have increased, with the wage gap reaching 35 percent in 1990. Disparities in completed years of schooling can explain a substantial share of the differences in labor market outcomes.

Reflections on Immigration Economics

2019 ◽  
pp. 574-582
Author(s):  
George J. Borjas
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
International Migration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Debate ◽  
Market Outcomes ◽  
Econometric Methods ◽  
Migration Flows ◽  
The Many

It has been most rewarding to witness the explosive growth in the amount of effort and attention that economists pay to immigration-related issues over the past 30 years. In the early 1980s, few economists seemed interested in these topics; the debate over immigration issues in the United States and Europe did not raise fundamental questions about social policy; and there were few technical or conceptual issues that cried out for an unambiguous resolution. The intellectual landscape has changed dramatically. Thirty years later, immigration-related issues attract an ever-increasing number of economists to examine the many questions that are raised by the policy debate; by the role that migration flows – and international migration flows, in particular – play in determining labor market outcomes in both sending and receiving countries; and by the ambiguities and difficult identification problems that permeate the models and econometric methods that are used to measure these outcomes....

scholarly journals Resurrecting the Role of the Product Market Wedge in Recessions

2018 ◽  
Vol 108 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 1118-1146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Bils ◽  
Peter J. Klenow ◽  
Benjamin A. Malin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Place ◽  
The Self ◽  
Intermediate Inputs ◽  
Matching Frictions ◽  
Labor Wedge ◽  
Sticky Wages

Employment and hours are more cyclical than dictated by productivity and consumption. This intratemporal labor wedge can arise from product or labor market distortions. Based on employee wages, the literature has attributed the intratemporal wedge almost entirely to labor market distortions. Because wages may be smoothed versions of labor's true cyclical price, we instead examine the self-employed and intermediate inputs, respectively. For recent decades in the United States, we find price markup movements are at least as cyclical as wage markup movements. Thus, countercyclical price markups deserve a central place in business-cycle research, alongside sticky wages and matching frictions. (JEL E24, E32, E63, J31, J41)

scholarly journals Refugees from Dust and Shrinking Land: Tracking the Dust Bowl Migrants

2018 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 1001-1033 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Long ◽  
Henry Siu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
Longitudinal Data ◽  
Labor Market Outcomes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Dust Bowl ◽  
Market Outcomes ◽  
Migration Rates ◽  
Migrant Selectivity ◽  
And Migration

We construct longitudinal data from U.S. census records to study the economics of the Dust Bowl migration of the 1930s. Most of our findings contradict long-standing perceptions. While migration rates were high relative to elsewhere in the United States, they were similar to migration rates from the region in the 1920s. Relative to other occupations, farmers were the least likely to move. Furthermore, migrants from the Dust Bowl were not exceptionally likely to move to California. Finally, there was negligible migrant selectivity, and migration was not associated with long-lasting negative labor market outcomes; indeed, for farmers, the gains from migration were positive.

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