Immigration and Wages
- A social post cited Harvard economist George Borjas saying immigration lowers native low‑skill wages. (x.com) - The analysis quantified the impact as roughly a 3–8% decline in earnings for native low‑skill workers. (x.com) - The post framed this as a supply–demand effect that pressures wages for the least skilled workers. (x.com)
Economists broadly agree on one starting point: when more workers compete for the same low-wage jobs, pay can fall for workers with similar skills. George Borjas of Harvard has argued that recent U.S. immigration did exactly that for some native workers at the bottom of the labor market. (nber.org) Borjas’s 2003 National Bureau of Economic Research paper estimated that a 10% increase in workers in a given skill group cuts wages in that group by 3% to 4%. In 2016 Senate testimony, he said that rule of thumb implies the biggest losses land on pre-existing low-skill workers because many recent immigrants entered low-skill jobs. (nber.org) (judiciary.senate.gov) That is where the often-cited 3% to 8% range comes from. Borjas wrote in 2006 that his work with Lawrence Katz found the 1980 to 2000 influx lowered wages for native high-school dropouts by about 8.9%, while other workers saw smaller effects or gains. (gborjas.scholars.harvard.edu) The dispute is not over basic supply and demand alone. It is over whether immigrants are close substitutes for native workers, whether businesses expand fast enough to absorb new labor, and whether native workers move into different jobs when immigration rises. (nationalacademies.org) That is why economists looking at the same question have reached different estimates. David Card’s 1990 study of the 1980 Mariel boatlift found that a 7% jump in Miami’s labor force had “virtually no effect” on wages or unemployment for less-skilled workers in Miami. (davidcard.berkeley.edu) The National Academies’ 2016 review said immigration’s long-run effect on the wages of native-born workers is “very small” overall, but it found wage effects are more likely to be negative for prior immigrants and for native-born workers without a high school diploma in the short run. The same report said capital investment, industry shifts, and occupational change can offset some early wage pressure over time. (nationalacademies.org) Newer work has pushed the debate further. A 2024 National Bureau of Economic Research paper by Giovanni Peri and co-authors estimated immigration from 2000 to 2019 raised wages for less-educated native workers by 1.7% to 2.6%, largely because immigrants and natives often do different tasks rather than the exact same jobs. (nber.org) A 2025 meta-analysis covering 88 studies published from 1985 to 2023 called the effect of immigration on native wages “contentious,” underscoring how much results still depend on method and assumptions. The narrow claim that low-skill immigration can reduce pay for competing low-skill workers is supported by some prominent research, but the size, duration, and scope of that effect remain heavily disputed in the literature. (sciencedirect.com)
