Labor Market Impacts
Recent Activity
Public opinion supports the view that immigrants take natives’ jobs and reduce their wages, but most economists disagree. Although basic laws of supply and demand suggest that immigration could reduce wages by increasing the supply of workers, in reality the actual impact of immigration is likely to be small, especially in the long run.
This report seeks to understand and predict the potential impact of the economic crisis that began in December 2007 on legal and illegal immigration flows to and from the United States, and the likely effects of an economic downturn on the labor market performance of immigrants.
This short briefing paper explores the potential effects of the economic crisis with respect to immigration across European Union Member States, and outlines how policymakers might respond to changing patterns of migrant inflows and outflows, and the consequences of the downturn on immigrants and their host communities.
The Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) and Europe appear to be an ideal demographic match: the former has a large supply of young, active workers, and the latter has a shortage of the youthful, skilled or unskilled labor it needs to sustain its economic competitiveness. MENA is the source of 20 million first-generation migrants, half of them now living in another MENA country and most of the rest in Europe. The region also hosts around the same number within its borders. In addition, the size of MENA’s working-age population will continue to rise sharply in the next two decades while the corresponding segment of the population in Europe will soon start to decline.
This brief offers an analysis of the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, the Philippines’ highly successful system of managing the overseas employment of temporary Filipino workers. The report examines the structure and mechanism of the system, identifies key areas of improvement, and offers policy recommendations for addressing existing flaws.
Migrants' networks and relatively small travel distances help explain migration from one developing country to another. Dilip Ratha and William Shaw of the World Bank look at these and other reasons for and effects of South-South migration.
In the 1990s, Mexican immigrants began to leave California, Texas, and Illinois for the so-called new settlement states where they had not previously resided. As Ivan Light of UCLA explains, their reasons for leaving or bypassing Los Angeles were both economic and political.