Most Latino Workers Born in U.S., Study Says

New York Times

Most Latino Workers Born in U.S., Study Says

By Tanzina Vega

June 19, 2014

Immigrants no longer make up the majority of Latino workers in the United States, according to a report released Thursday by the Pew Research Center.

Immigrants, which includes Latinos who have come to this country legally or illegally, made up 49.7 percent of Latino workers in 2013, down from 56.1 percent in 2007, the study found. Contributing to the decline, the report said, was a sluggish economic recovery, slowing immigration from countries such as Mexico, and tougher immigration policies including deportations and border control.

Much of the shift, the report said, was because of a decline in the housing industry. A prerecession boom in that sector created 1.6 million jobs for Latino immigrants from 2004 to 2007. Researchers do not expect many of those jobs to return.

“People are generally of the consensus that there is no imminent sign of the economic recovery picking up steam,” said Rakesh Kochhar, an author of the study and the associate director for research of the Hispanic Trends Project for the Pew Research Center.

“If job opportunities and wage growth remain anemic in the United States, it is likely that immigration inflows are not likely to return to prerecession levels either,” Mr. Kochhar said. “We don’t see signs on the horizon that this is going to change anytime soon.”

The flow of immigrants from Mexico, which brought 12 million people, most of whom entered illegally, to the United States in the last four decades, has stalled. From 2005 to 2010, 1.4 million Mexicans came to the United States, less than half the number that arrived from 1995 to 2000. The report’s analysis ends in 2013 and does not include the current surge of mostly child migrants coming across the border.

“There are some people coming, but there are an equal number going back,” Mr. Kochhar said of Mexican immigrants. “The inflow has been canceled by the outflow.”

In contrast, births among Mexicans in the United States, rather than immigration, is now driving the growth of the Latino population in the country. From 2000 to 2010, 7.2 million Mexicans gave birth in the United States, compared with the 4.2 million who immigrated to the country. The Latino birthrate remains higher than the national birthrate as a whole, Mr. Kochhar said. The share of Latinos born in the United States has been on the rise since 2000, accounting for 64 percent of the total Latino population in 2011, compared with 36 percent who are foreign born.

According to the report, American-born Latinos are benefiting most from the job recovery in part because their numbers have increased. Since the recovery began in 2009, Latinos born in the United States gained 2.3 million jobs, more than making up for the 37,000 jobs lost during the recession. Latino immigrants lost 340,000 jobs during the recession and have gained 453,000 jobs since the recovery began. The unemployment rate among Latinos age 16 and older was 8.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2013, the study said.

The study said that job growth among Latinos since the recession ended has been concentrated in the service industries — restaurants, lodging, wholesale and retail trades as well as professional and business services, which includes consulting and landscaping.

Wages among foreign-born Latinos and those born in the United States have also remained relatively stagnant since 2007, with median weekly earnings for American-born Latinos at $640 compared with $500 for those born abroad.

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