Resilience of Immigrants in the US Recession and Recovery
Keywords:
Great Recession, Recovery, immigrants, business cycle, vulnerability thesis, USAbstract
The Business Cycle argument proposes that immigrants should perform more poorly than natives in economic downturns and rebound more quickly in upturns. As specifically applied to the Great Recession, the vulnerability thesis suggests that among immigrants, the unskilled, Latinos, males, and those residing in the South and West should have been affected more negatively by the recession and more positively by the recovery, than their respective native counterparts. In this study I compare changes in unemployment and wages for immigrants and natives over the three years of recession (2006-2009) and the subsequent three years of recovery (2009-2012), drawing upon the PUMS one per cent sample from the American Community Survey (ACS) for the individual years 2006, 2009, and 2012. The results tend to support both the business cycle scenario and the vulnerability thesis, with a twist. Relative gains by immigrants in the Recovery exceeded their losses from the Recession, and less-vulnerable immigrant groups improved their position over natives during both the recession and the recovery. A shift-shares analysis indicates that immigrants' employment losses in the Recession were due both to their sectoral concentration and their lack of competitiveness relative to natives within sectors. In the Recovery their employment gains were overwhelmingly due to their greater competitiveness and employability within sectors.References
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