Highly-Educated Immigrants and Native Occupational Choice

Giovanni Peri () and Chad Sparber ()

No 813, CReAM Discussion Paper Series from Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM), Department of Economics, University College London

Abstract: Economic debate about the consequences of immigration in the US has largely focused on how influxes of foreign-born labor with little educational attainment have affected similarly-educated native-born workers. Surprisingly few studies, however, analyze the effect of immigration within the market for highly-educated labor. We use O*NET data on job characteristics to assess whether native-born workers with graduate degrees respond to the presence of highly-educated foreign-born workers by choosing new occupations with different skill content. We find that immigrants with graduate degrees specialize in occupations demanding quantitative and analytical skills, whereas their native-born counterparts specialize in occupations requiring interactive and communication skills. Native employees leave occupations with a high proportion of highlyeducated immigrants for occupations with less analytical and more communicative content. For completeness, we also assess whether immigration causes highly-educated natives to lose their jobs or move across state boundaries. We no evidence that the former occurs, but mixed evidence for the latter response.

Keywords: Immigration; Occupational Choice; Highly-Educated Workers; Communication Skills; Mathematical Skills (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F22 J61 J31 R13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev, nep-edu, nep-lab and nep-mig
Date: 2008-10
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