Latino Newcomers and Wages of Other Workers: Metropolitan Area and Occupation Effects.

Research on the impact of immigration on U.S. wages has centered on pay differences between (a) metropolitan areas and (b) local occupations. This paper employs 3-level hierarchical modeling to test effects on men's wages at both the metropolitan area (MA) level and the local occupation level. I focus here on Latino immigration, as the majority of recent immigrants hails from Latin America. Utilizing the 2000 5% Census PUMS for men in 57 immigrant-receiving MAs, the analyses replicate the past finding that, workers employed in local occupations with a large share of newcomer Latinos suffer a wage disadvantage. However, I demonstrate that this occupation effect is strongly influenced by the degree of occupational segregation in the MA: Wage penalties are greater when newcomers' occupational distribution more closely resembles that of other workers. Further, the paper tests the importance of MA characteristics on wages and demonstrates that the representation of newcomer Latinos in the MA has no appreciable effect on wages, once local industrial structure is taken into account. The analyses provide evidence that, with respect to immigration's potential influence on native wages, the "action" is at the local occupation level, not at the more aggregate level of metropolitan areas. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]