Sectoral Employment
Recent Activity
In a report by MPI's Labor Markets Initiative, noted economist and Georgetown University Public Policy Institute Professor Harry J. Holzer examines the economic reasoning and research on these questions and looks at the policy options that shape the impact of less-skilled immigration on the economy. The discussion is on what policy reform would best serve native-born American workers, consumers, and employers, as well as the overall U.S. economy.
Notwithstanding the broad consensus on the benefits of highly skilled immigration, the economic role of less-skilled immigrants is one of the more controversial questions in the immigration debate. While less-skilled immigrants bring economic benefits for U.S. consumers, employers, and skilled workers, they impose some costs on U.S. workers competing for similar jobs.
This important MPI report challenges the conventional wisdom about the immigrant workforce, using a sophisticated new method of analysis that permits deeper examination of how workers – immigrant and native-born – fare by economic sector, the skill level of their jobs, and educational attainment.
The enlargement of the European Union has fundamentally changed migration patterns to the United Kingdom. Since May 2004 an estimated 1.5 million workers have moved to the UK from new EU member states. This report looks at the challenges ahead as migration patterns shift across the UK.
This report analyzes employment and unemployment patterns from 1994 to 2008, offers possible explanations for why labor market outcomes for immigrants have been more cyclical, and proposes possible public policy solutions for mitigating immigrants’ vulnerability to the business cycle.
This report, commissioned by the BBC World Service, seeks to explore the myriad impacts of the global financial crisis that began in September 2008 on migration flows, immigration policies, remittances, and on migrants themselves. Select countries and regions are examined in detail to highlight overarching trends and regional differences.
In order to rectify the shortcomings of a rigid and outdated U.S. visa system set in place by the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA), this report recommends creating a new visa stream called provisional visas which would sync visa policies with the way in which labor markets work in practice, and bridge temporary and permanent employment-based admissions to the United States in a predictable and transparent way.