Workplace Concentration of Immigrants

Fredrik Andersson, Monica Garcia-Perez, John Haltiwanger, Kristin McCue and Seth Sanders

Working Papers from U.S. Census Bureau, Center for Economic Studies

Abstract: To what extent do immigrants and the native-born work in separate workplaces? Do worker and employer characteristics explain the degree of workplace concentration? We explore these questions using a matched employer-employee database that extensively covers employers in selected MSAs. We find that immigrants are much more likely to have immigrant coworkers than are natives, and are particularly likely to work with their compatriots. We find much higher levels of concentration for small businesses than for large ones, that concentration varies substantially across industries, and that concentration is particularly high among immigrants with limited English skills. We also find evidence that neighborhood job networks are strongly positively associated with concentration. The effects of networks and language remain strong when type is defined by country of origin rather than simply immigrant status. The importance of these factors varies by immigrant country of origin—for example, not speaking English well has a particularly strong association with concentration for immigrants from Asian countries. Controlling for differences across MSAs, we find that observable employer and employee characteristics account for about half of the difference between immigrants and natives in the likelihood of having immigrant coworkers, with differences in industry, residential segregation and English speaking skills being the most important factors.

Keywords: concentration; segregation; immigrant workers; social networks (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 61 pages
Date: 2010-11, Revised 2011-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab, nep-mig, nep-sea and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
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Downloads: (external link)
https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2010/CES-WP-10-39R.pdf Revised version, 2011 (application/pdf)
https://www2.census.gov/ces/wp/2010/CES-WP-10-39.pdf First version, 2010 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Workplace Concentration of Immigrants (2014)
Working Paper: Workplace Concentration of Immigrants (2011)
Working Paper: Workplace Concentration of Immigrants (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cen:wpaper:10-39

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