The Effects of Immigrants on African-American Earnings

The improvement in the relative economic status of African American workers in the 1960s and 1970s was reversed in the 1980s. During that decade immigration to the United States reached its highest level since the early part of this century, and many immigrants entered lesser-skilled labor markets, where most African American labor is concentrated. Yet, in what George Borjas terms an "unresolved puzzle," most researchers have been unable to find any significant negative wage effects caused by immigration. Research Associate David R. Howell and Elizabeth J. Mueller, both of the Robert J. Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy of the New School for Social Research, point out that most of this research has used across-metropolitan tests despite the fact that immigrants tend to be concentrated in only a few metropolitan areas. Howell and Mueller attempt to solve the puzzle of the relationship between immigration and wages by focusing on specific jobs in specific metropolitan areas in which immigrants are concentrated.