Do Smarter Workers Work Less?

New York Times: Last week, we summarized a Labor Department report on hours worked and earnings by state, which found that Nevadans work the longest hours and workers in the District of Columbia had the highest hourly wage. Over at The Atlantic, Richard Florida has parsed the data to focus on what makes a state’s labor force more or less likely to work longer weeks and get higher pay. Another provocative trend that Mr. Florida found is between immigration and state pay. Economists have long debated how immigration affects the American job market, with some believing that it depresses (at least some) native workers’ wages and others arguing that immigration is a boon to the American economy and average worker earnings. This scatterplot suggests that state hourly earnings are positively associated with the percentage of immigrants (correlation of 0.64). Again, correlation is not causation, and there may be all sorts of confounding variables here that skew the results. But even so, it’s food for thought.