Since we a nation of immigrants and just celebrated independence day, it seems like a good week to cover the BLS data on foreign born workers. In March, the BLS released their annual analysis of the number and characteristics of foreign born U.S. workers. Here's a quick summary:
1. Foreign born workers comprise about 15.5% of the US civilian labor force, or about 23.9 million workers. This is little changed from 2008, but up from 14.5% in 2004.
2. Hispanics make up just over 50.5% of foreign born workers. Again, this is little changed from 2008 but up from 49% in 2004.
3. Not surprisingly, the western part of the U.S. has the highest level of foreign born workers with 23.8% of workforce being foreign born.. The northeast was 2nd, at 17.9%. The midwest was lowest, at 7.7%.
The long term trend of a growing percentage of the U.S. workforce being foreign born started in the 1970's. Since then the percentage of the workforce that is foreign born has more than doubled and is at its highest point since the Ellis Island years early in the 20th century.
However, this upward trend seems to have moderated over the last 2 years. The recession, no doubt, is having a major impact as is relatively stronger economic growth elsewhere in the world. It will be interesting to see if this change is temporary or long term.
We're always asked if this data includes foreign born workers who are in the country illegally. According to the BLS technical notes it does include "undocumented workers", the BLS term for illegal aliens.
Having said that, for obvious reasons it is likely any official survey undercounts illegal aliens.
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.