The effect of minimum wages on immigrants' employment and earnings

Pia Orrenius and Madeline Zavodny

No 805, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

Abstract: This study examines how minimum wage laws affect the employment and earnings of low-skilled immigrants and natives in the U.S. Minimum wage increases might have larger effects among low-skilled immigrants than among natives because, on average, immigrants earn less than natives due to lower levels of education, limited English skills, and less social capital. Results based on data from the Current Population Survey for the years 1994?2005 do not indicate that minimum wages have adverse employment effects among adult immigrants or natives who did not complete high school. However, low-skilled immigrants may have been discouraged from settling in states that set wage floors substantially above the federal minimum.

Keywords: Immigrants; Minimum wage; Human capital; Education; Wages; Employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2008
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm, nep-lab and nep-mig
Note: Published as: Orrenius, Pia M. and Madeline Zavodny (2008), "The Effect of Minimum Wages on Immigrants' Employment and Earnings," Industrial and Labor Relations Review 61 (4): 544-563.
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (33)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.dallasfed.org/~/media/documents/research/papers/2008/wp0805.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Effect of Minimum Wages on Immigrants' Employment and Earnings (2008)
Working Paper: The Effect of Minimum Wages on Immigrants’ Employment and Earnings (2008)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:feddwp:0805

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Amy Chapman ().