Immigration and Business Turnover in U.S. Labor Markets

"This project seeks to understand how the link between immigrants and both firm survival and firm creation shapes the effects of immigration on local labor markets in the U.S. Using two sources of plausibly exogenous variation, initial results from a decadal analysis covering 1980 through 2010 indicate that commuting zones with higher immigrant shares feature both more establishments and more establishment churning. These effects are concentrated at the tails of the establishment size distribution and particularly driven by immigrants with no more than a high school degree. The presence of more establishments appears to spill over to low-skilled native workers by allowing them to engage in more job-to-job transitions. Future work on this project will utilize establishment-level data to further understand the relationship between immigration and monopsonistic conditions in local labor markets"

• IPC
• immigration
• H2D2 Seminar
• U.S. Labor Markets