Research chart by a team including Chad Sparber published in the Wall Street journal
As debate over immigration policy continues in the nation’s capital and across the country, research by °IJʿ professor and two colleagues continues to add to the dialogue.
In 2013, began research showing that an — a program for U.S. companies to bring in skilled immigrants — did not harm U.S. workers or the U.S. economy.
In fact, the research found that “inflows of foreign H-1B workers may explain between 30% and 50% of the aggregate productivity growth… that took place in the US between 1990 and 2010.”
Sparber and his research associates — Giovanni Peri and Kevin Shih, both of the University of California, Davis — continue to study the numbers, and and their impact on the STEM professions: science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
According to a report in the , the research team found that as immigrants in the STEM professions flocked to a city, the more wages grew for the native-born, college-educated population. Their findings were released this month by the .
“A one percentage point increase in the foreign STEM share of a city’s total employment increased wages of native college-educated labor by about 7-8 percentage points and the wages of non-college educated natives by 3-4 percentage points,” according to the Journal article.
Importantly, their results identify a causal effect of immigration on wages that is distinct from the fact that productive cities will attract more immigrants.
An interactive chart offering a drill-down of the numbers is part of the Journal report. Click on the chart to see how the wages of college-educated students increase in a city with the addition of STEM immigrants with H-1B visas.
Research chart by a team including Chad Sparber was published in the Wall Street Journal.