Posts Tagged: labor force
Americans less concerned than a decade ago over immigrants’ impact on workforce
The overall population is almost evenly split on whether growing numbers of immigrant workers help or hurt U.S. workers overall: 45% say having more immigrant workers hurts Americans and 42% say this trend helps U.S. workers. (The survey referred to immigrants in general and did not specify whether they were legally permitted or undocumented.)
These attitudes have changed significantly since a 2006 Pew Research Center survey, which found that 55% of Americans believed that the presence of more immigrant workers hurt U.S. laborers. That figure has since decreased by 10 percentage points.
Additionally, the share of Americans who thought a decade ago that the growing number of immigrants helped workers was 28%, marking a 14-point increase in that positive view.
There is a far wider partisan divide on this question – one that has been hotly debated during the 2016 campaign – than there was 10 years ago. The new poll shows that since 2006, Democrats have moved substantially in the direction of seeing immigrant workers as a plus when it comes to their effect on American worker: Today, about six-in-ten (58%) say that having more immigrant workers helps U.S. jobholders, up from just 30% who said this in 2006. Over the same time period, Republican opinion has shifted slightly in the opposite direction: Among adults who identify with the GOP, 54% now believe that the growing number of immigrant workers hurts American workers (a 6-point increase since 2006).
Overall, when Americans are asked what hurts American workers, the top answers are outsourcing jobs to other countries (80% of Americans think this hurts U.S. jobholders), more foreign-made products being sold in the U.S. (77% think this hurts), increased use of contract or temporary employees (57%), automation of jobs (50%) and the decline in union membership (49%).
While there are partisan differences over immigration in this election campaign, fairly strong majorities of Americans have positive views about immigrants, including those who are unauthorized.
An August poll by Pew Research Center showed that 71% of Americans said undocumented immigrants mostly fill jobs that U.S. citizens do not want, while 24% said such immigrants mostly fill jobs citizens would like. And a large majority of adults (76%) said that undocumented immigrants are as honest and hardworking as U.S. citizens.
The U.S. has 44 million immigrants, more than any other country, that together make up 13.6% of the U.S. population. Three-quarters of them are in the U.S. lawfully or hold U.S. citizenship. The remaining quarter are unauthorized immigrants. The latest estimates from Pew Research Center show that there were 11.1 million unauthorized immigrants in the country in 2014, a figure that has remained essentially stable since 2009.
Source: Published originally on PewResearchCenter, Americans less concerned than a decade ago over immigrants' impact on workforce, by Lee Rainie and Anna Brown, October 7, 2016.
Census bureau highlights young noncitizen population in the U.S.
The brief Noncitizens Under Age 35: 2010-2012 uses multiyear data from the American Community Survey to present demographic and socio-economic information about the noncitizen population under age 35. Noncitizens include legal permanent residents, temporary migrants, unauthorized immigrants and other resident statuses.
School Enrollment
Almost one-third of the 2.6 million noncitizens age 18 to 24 living in the U.S. were enrolled in college. Among 18- to 24-year-old noncitizens born in Asia, 65 percent were enrolled in college, followed by those born in Europe (54 percent), Africa (54 percent) and the Latin America and Caribbean region (18 percent).
Geographic Distribution and Region of Birth
Nationwide, noncitizens under age 35 represented about one-fourth (26 percent) of the total foreign-born population. At the state level, this proportion varied from about one out of five (18 percent) to two out of five (41 percent). Traditional immigration gateway states like California, Texas, New York and Florida account for the majority of noncitizens under 35.
More than 64 percent of the 10.3 million noncitizens in the U.S. under the age of 35 were born in Latin America and the Caribbean. Asia (23 percent) made up the second highest group of under age 35 noncitizens in the U.S., followed by Europe (6 percent).
Other findings include:
- California had 2.3 million noncitizens under age 35, the most of any state. Following California were Texas (1.3 million), New York (916,000), Florida (747,000) and Illinois (450,000).
- Metropolitan areas with the largest number of noncitizens under age 35 included New York (1.2 million) and Los Angeles (927,000), with Chicago, Dallas, Houston and Miami all at about 400,000.
Labor Force
Among the civilian population, citizens age 25 to 34 (83 percent) were more likely than noncitizens of the same age range (75 percent) to be in the labor force. In addition, of those in the labor force, 65 percent of citizens compared with 60 percent of noncitizens were employed full time, year-round.
Other findings include:
- Noncitizens in the civilian labor force age 25 to 34 were more likely to work in service occupations (27 percent); followed by management, business, science and arts occupations (25 percent); and natural resources, construction and maintenance occupations (20 percent).
- Citizens in the civilian labor force age 25 to 34 were more likely to work in management, business, science and arts occupations (39 percent); sales and office occupations (25 percent); and service occupations (18 percent).
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Noncitizens Under Age 35: 2010-2012, February 26, 2014.
Latinos well-represented in growth industries, insecure in employment
New data from the U.S. Department of Labor indicate that new job growth is occurring in industries where Hispanic workers have a strong presence, said a study from National Council of La Raza. The service sector accounted for the bulk of the 192,000 new jobs between January and February 2011, thanks to industries such as administrative and waste services, nursing and residential care, and trucking. But, despite these positive signs, worrisome trends and public opinion call for policies to improve the employment prospects for vulnerable workers.
Latinos are overrepresented in all sub-industries fueling the growth of the transportation and warehousing sector. This includes trucking, which accounted for half of the new job growth in this industry. Employment services -which includes temporary help service- is an industry that has experienced consistent growth over the last year and employs a disproportionately large share of Latinos.But the news is not all good for Hispanic workers. February was the third month in a row in which Latinos exited the labor force and consequently were not counted among the unemployed. This fact probably contributed to the slightly lower Latino unemployment rate in February.
A new Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation-Harvard University poll confirms that Latinos are more likely than other workers to have “given up looking for work because of a lack of good jobs.” In the same poll, Latinos were more likely to express anxiety about their job security; 33% of Latinos, 22% of Blacks, and 20% of Whites report feeling insecure about their jobs.
Source: National Council of La Raza, “Latinos Well-Represented in Growth Industries, Insecure in Employment”, March 2011.
State of the Latino workforce
At nearly 23 million, people of Hispanic or Latino ethnicity represented 15 percent of the United States' labor force in 2010. By 2018, Hispanics are expected to comprise 18 percent of the labor force.
A report released by the U.S. Department of Labor indicates that in 2010, 59 percent of Hispanics aged 16 and over were employed and just under 1 in 5 of those employed were working part-time. Forty-one percent of all employed Hispanics in 2010 were women, compared to 46 percent among employed whites. Women represent a smaller share of the Hispanic labor force both because of the high labor force participation of Hispanic men and the lower labor force participation rate of Hispanic women compared to whites.
Hispanics are more likely than either whites or blacks to be employed in the private sector, with more than 8 in 10 employed Hispanics working in the private sector, not including the unincorporated self-employed. Conversely, Hispanics are less likely to work for government than are either whites or blacks. Self-employment is a growing alternative to private sector employment among Hispanics. According to the most recent Census Bureau Survey of Business Owners (2007), Hispanic-owned businesses are the fastest growing small business sector, expanding at nearly twice the rate of the national average between 2002 and 2007.
Half of Hispanics working full-time earned $535 or more per week in 2010. This median weekly wage was only 70 percent of that earned by whites.
The unemployment rate averaged 12.5 percent among Hispanics in 2010. The most recent unemployment report in February 2011 shows that the economic situation is improving for all Americans, including Hispanics, who have seen their unemployment rate decline to 11.6 percent. In addition, unemployed Hispanics experience a shorter duration of unemployment and are less likely to join the ranks of the long-term unemployed than are either their white or black counterparts. However, the higher rate of unemployment among all Hispanics means that a greater share of Hispanics will experience long-term unemployment than will whites.
While the unemployment rate among Hispanic men continues to be slightly higher than that of Hispanic women, the gap is narrower when compared to 2009. There are several factors that could have contributed to the increase in unemployment among Hispanic women, including their disproportionate participation in industries that have continued to experience job losses, such as state and local government. For example, 55.1 percent of Hispanic government workers were women in 2010. Moreover, there are industries — like manufacturing — where Hispanic women lost jobs in 2010, while Hispanic men gained jobs.Hispanic youth (ages 16-19) have much higher unemployment rates than do adults. The unemployment rate for Hispanic youth reached a high of 32.2 percent in 2010 and as of February 2011 had fallen to 30.6 percent.
Unemployment rates are lowest among those with a bachelor's degree or higher. For instance, the 2010 unemployment rate among Hispanics with at least a bachelor's degree was 6.0 percent, (compared to 4.3 percent for whites). Unemployment rates are higher for those with fewer years of schooling. In 2010, 11.5 percent of Hispanics in the labor force with only a high school degree were unemployed (compared to 9.5 percent of whites with only a high school degree), and 13.2 percent of Hispanics in the labor force with less than a high school degree (compared to 13.9 percent among whites with less than a high school degree) were unemployed.
Hispanic employment declined most significantly in construction, manufacturing, financial activities, and in professional and business services during the recession of 2007-2009. Together, these industries accounted for nearly 1.1 million jobs lost among Hispanic workers.
Hispanics account for almost one in every four workers in the construction industry. Hispanics are underrepresented in STEM occupations — accounting for seven percent or less of jobs — in math and science related occupations, such as computer and mathematical occupations, architecture and engineering occupations, and life, physical, and social science occupations.
Occupational Safety and Health
Overall work-related fatalities declined in 2009, the most recent year for which data is available. According to preliminary estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2009 Hispanic workers experienced the highest rate of work-related fatal injuries at 3.7 incidents per 100,000 full time equivalent workers, compared to 3.4 for whites and 3.0 for blacks. Hispanic workers experienced 17 percent fewer work related fatal injuries in 2009 compared to 2008.
The decline in fatal work injuries among Hispanic workers in 2009 was largest for foreign-born Hispanic workers, whose fatal work injury counts decreased by 22 percent. In comparison, the decline among native-born Hispanics was 9 percent.
Source: Department of Labor, The Hispanic labor force in the recovery,” March 31, 2011.