Search

Although immigrants to the United States earn less at entry than their native-born counterparts, an extensive literature has found that immigrants have faster earnings growth that results in rapid convergence to native-born earnings. However, recent evidence based on U.S. Census data indicates a slowdown in the rate of earnings assimilation. We find that the pace of immigrant wage convergence based on recent data may be understated in the literature as a result of the method used by the census to impute missing information on earnings, which does not use immigration status as a match characteristic. Because both the share of immigrants in the workforce and earnings imputation rates have risen over time, imputation match bias for recent immigrants is more consequential than in earlier periods and may lead to an underestimate of the rate of immigrant wage convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the Canadian Labour Force Survey for March of 2006 through 2012, the present study examines precarious employment and trends over time between immigrants (recent and established) and their Canadian-born counterparts. The regression models are run separately for males and females as existing research shows that many precarious jobs are occupied predominantly by women. The findings of the present study show recent immigrant males and females (respondents in the sample who have lived in Canada for five years or less) are over-represented in involuntary part-time work and this trend is increasing over time. The pattern is not as pronounced for multiple-job holders nor for temporary-job holders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study interviewed 350 African immigrants in North Carolina (NC) to shed light on their economic conditions. It focused primarily on their labor force participation and incomes for the period 2004-2014. The findings showed that both structural changes in NC's economy and prejudicial experiences within the labor force were the most important forces that undermined the economic ambitions of the Africans. The study also yielded a complex picture and raised some questions about the resettlement outcome of African immigrants in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although women's representation among international migrants in many countries has risen over the last 100 years, we know far less about gender gaps in the labor force participation of immigrants across a wide span of host societies. Prior studies have established that immigrant women are doubly disadvantaged in terms of labor market outcomes in the U.S., Canada, and Israel. These studies suggest an intriguing question: Are there gender gaps in immigrant labor force participation across destinations countries? In this paper, we investigate the extent to which the double disadvantage exists for immigrant women in a variety of host countries. We also examine how marriage moderates this double disadvantage. For the U.S., although we find that immigrant women have had the lowest labor force participation rates compared to natives and immigrant men since 1960, marital status is an important stratifying attribute that helps explain nativity differences. Extending the analysis to eight other countries reveals strong gender differences in labor force participation and shows how marriage differentiates immigrant women's labor force entry more so than men's. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canada's immigration system is currently undergoing significant change driven by several goals that include (1) a desire to improve the economic outcomes of entering immigrants; (2) an attempt to better respond to short-term regional labor market shortages often associated with commodity booms, and (3) a desire to shift immigration away from the three largest cities to other regions of the country. These goals reflect the implementation of new immigration programs in the 2000s. The paper discusses the recent changes to Canadian immigration policy, examines preliminary evaluations of the new programs and discusses potential future issues emanating from the changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant number of immigrants fail to realise their full potential in the US labour markets, as evidenced by those working in occupations requiring skill levels far below their own level of education. While previous studies have studied immigrant underemployment with a focus on individual labour force characteristics, the spatial dimensions of immigrant underemployment have been largely overlooked. Using microdata from the 2006–2010 American Community Survey and a multilevel research design, this study examines the interaction of metropolitan labour market characteristics with individual labour force’s underemployment experiences, and explores how these interaction effects differ between the foreign-born and the native-born. Results suggest that the probability of individual labour force’s underemployment within any metropolitan area is highly contingent on metropolitan labour market characteristics including ethnic diversity, the proportion of its foreign-born population, the economic structure, and the level of educational attainment of the labour force, in addition to individual characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]