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Commissioner Statements
77
native-born American workers, respectively. Such workers are thus more likely to be
concentrated in the low-skill labor market.
Native-born low-skill workers appear to be dropping out of the labor market, while
rates of immigrants have increased.
A 2006 Center for Immigration Studies analysis
showed that the percentage of native-born Americans in the labor force with either a
high school diploma or less fell from 59 percent to 56 percent in the preceding five
years.
131
The study estimated that approximately 1.5 million native-born Americans
with a high school diploma or less left the workforce during that period. During the
same period, the number of immigrants in the workforce (legal and illegal) with high
school diplomas or less
increased
by almost the same amount—1.6 million.
Low-skilled immigrants and blacks are concentrated in the same occupations and
specific segments of the labor market, suggesting they compete for work.
The same
CIS study referenced above reveals that the occupations with the highest percentage
of illegal immigrants are occupations that also have the highest unemployment rates
for the native born. These same occupations happen to be among those that have
traditionally employed the highest percentage of black workers, e.g., building
cleaning and maintenance,
132
food preparation
133
and construction.
Thus, while illegal immigration alone cannot be said to have caused negative employment
outcomes for black workers, there is ample evidence to suggest that at a minimum, it has had
an aggravating effect on both the displacement of low-skilled American workers and the
racial divide in employment. This is because illegal immigration tends to increase the supply
of low-skilled, low-wage labor already available in the U.S. labor market. Geographic
131
Steven Camarota,
Dropping Out: Immigrant Entry and Native Exit from the Labor Market, 2000-2005
, CIS
B
ACKGROUNDER
(Mar. 2006
), available at
http://www.cis.org/articles/2006/back206.pdf
. For a discussion of
how the ―dropping out‖ phenomenon impacts reporting of unemployment numbers,
see also
discussion in
Johannsson and Shulman
, supra
note 13.
132
A 1988 Government Accountability Office (GAO) study of Los Angeles janitorial services found that when
several small firms began hiring illegal immigrants as janitors for lower pay, building owners dropped contracts
with the companies that employed black workers in favor of the cheaper contractor. As the immigrant-
employing firms overtook a larger share of the market, local janitorial industry wages dropped by over a
dollar—from a peak of $6.58 an hour in 1983 to $5.63 an hour in 1985. The number of black janitors in L.A.
also dropped from about 2,500 in the late 1970s to only 600 by
1985. G
OV
‘
T
A
CCOUNTABILITY
O
FFICE
,
GAO/PEMD-99-13BR, I
LLEGAL
A
LIENS
: I
NFLUENCE OF
I
LLEGAL
W
ORKERS ON
W
AGES AND
W
ORKING
C
ONDITIONS OF
L
EGAL
W
ORKERS
, (Mar. 1988).
133
Industry-specific impacts of an influx of illegal immigrant labor are instructive. For a discussion of the
decline of wages, employment opportunities and conditions in the meatpacking/poultry industries, as well as
evidence that strict enforcement produces more job opportunities for native-born, displaced workers at higher
wages,
see
Evan Perez and Corey Dale,
An immigration raid aids blacks for a time
, WSJ (Jan. 17, 2007),
available at
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07017/754517-28.stm;
Joel Dyer,
Meatpacking industry has a
long history of reliance on immigrant laborer,
F
T
. C
OLLINS
W
KLY
. (Dec. 26, 2006),
available at
http://www.greeleytribune.com/article/20061226/NEWS/112230087;
Bill Jackson,
More applicants applying
for Swift & Co.
, T
HE
T
RIBUNE
(Dec. 20, 2006),
available at
http://www.greeleytribune.com/article/20061220/BUSINESS/112200084;
Former Dallas employees sue Swift
alleging wage manipulation
, A
SSOCIATED
P
RESS
(Dec. 18, 2006),
available at
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/10561323/detail.html.
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