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ImmigrationProf Blog
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Immigrants and Labor Force Trends

By immigrationprof

Most projections of future immigration suggest that foreign-born workers will play a significant role in the growth and skill composition of the U.S. labor force. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects that the labor force will grow 12 percent (17.4 million) between 2002 and 2012, reaching a total of 162.3 million.

Given projections of slow growth of the native workforce, the levels of immigration used in BLS and other projections imply that immigrants will remain significant drivers of labor force growth. The BLS’ most recent projections assume that total immigration, both legal and unauthorized, will continue to bring between 900,000 and 1.3 million people to the country each year until 2012. Barring truly restrictionist policy, it is likely that immigrants will continue to comprises a significant supply of workers under any legislation that is passed. In fact, immigrants have been an important source of labor source growth in the recent past, making up 48.6 percent of the total labor force increase between 1996 and 2000, and as much as 60 percent of the increase from 2000 to 2004.

These projections imply that an immigrant workforce of 19 million is projected to grow to 25 million by 2010, 29 million by 2020, and to 31 million by 2030. Likewise the share of immigrants in the total labor force is predicted to climb from 13 percent in 2000 to 18 percent by 2030, and then remain little changed through 2050. After 2030, the projections indicate little further growth of the immigrant workforce, while much of the ongoing growth of the native workforce is implicitly being driven by the children of immigrants or the second generation.

Calculations by the Urban Institute suggest that if no immigrants entered the country after 2000, the labor force would be nearly 10 million workers smaller by 2015 than if immigration follows current projections. By 2050, the difference between the size of the labor force with immigration and without would be 45 million.

source: Migration Policy Institute
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