According to a new report by the Center for Immigration Studies, immigrants to the United States have been hit harder by the recession as compared to native-born Americans, with larger increases in unemployment among both educated and uneducated workers. The report, which was based on U.S. Census statistics, found that immigrants (legal and illegal) now have significantly higher unemployment than natives, which represents a departure from the recent past, when native-born Americans typically had higher unemployment rates. Immigrant unemployment in the first quarter of 2009 was 9.7%, the highest level since 1994 (when data began to be collected for immigrants). The current unemployment rate for natives is 8.6%, also the highest since 1994.
Other key findings of the study include:
- The immigrant unemployment rate is now 5.6 percentage points higher than in the third quarter of 2007, before the recession began. Native unemployment has increased 3.8 percentage points over the same period.
- Among immigrants who arrived in 2006 or later, unemployment is 13.3%.
- The number of unemployed immigrants increased 1.3 million (130%) since the third quarter of 2007. Among natives the increase was five million (81%).
As reported in The Los Angeles Times, Steven Camarota, the study's coauthor, commented that many of the immigrant job losses came in low-skill occupations. In construction, for instance, the immigrant jobless rate climbed to 20% in the first quarter of 2009, from 4.7% 18 months earlier.
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Two bills introduced in both the House and Senate last week would make significant changes to the H-2B guest worker program. Both the Increasing American Wages and Benefits Act of 2010 (S. 2910) introduced in the Senate, and the H-2B Program Reform Act of 2009 (H.R. 4381) introduced in the House of Representatives, would establish new procedural and monetary requirements for employers that seek to hire temporary foreign workers, as well as impose stiffer penalties for noncompliance with these new requirements. Continue reading about this development on Littler's Washington D.C. Employment Law Update blog.
