5. The Occupational Location of Spanish–English Bilinguals in the New Information Economy: The Health and Criminal Justice Sectors in the US Borderlands with Mexico

Is There Really a Labor Market Advantage to Being Bilingual in the U.S.?

“…The Labor Market Analyses of Bilingualism section in this report turns to three studies that use U.S. Census data to test the hypothesis that bilinguals might receive additional compensation for their language skills, especially if they are situated in jobs that require sensitive and extensive interpersonal contact, such as those in the health and criminal justice sectors. This group of studies is authored by Joseph Robinson‐Cimpian () and Amado Alarcón and several colleagues (Alarcón, Di Paolo, Heyman, & Morales, , ). The New Questions, New Data, and New Answers section in this report combines studies that take a different approach, either by asking different questions, such as, Does linguistic assimilation exact a cost on language minority youth in the labor market?…”

“…The Robinson‐Cimpian () study used a national sample from the ACS with workers 24 to 64 years of age, while the two Alarcón studies (Alarcón et al, , ) drew their ACS sample from the borderlands of United States–Mexico in the first study and Dallas‐Tarrant County in the second study and employed a sample of workers aged 17–70. Given that past studies with ACS data have consistently found that there is no wage premium for bilingual workers, these researchers pursued somewhat more detailed questions.…”

“…If indeed Robinson‐Cimpian () was correct in his analyses that, overall, there are few differences, if any, in the earnings of bilingual and monolingual workers in the U.S. labor market, then Alarcón et al (, ) asked the next obvious question: Are there differences in the way that bilingual workers are valued by job type? In other words, if one works in a field that is heavily dependent upon client interaction, and the work is located in an area with a high percentage of non‐English speakers, will these linguistic skills be more highly valued than in the labor market as a whole?…”

“…Alarcón et al () used the same ACS (2007–2010) dataset that Robinson‐Cimpian () used, but they sampled from several geographical sites along the border between Texas and California. They divided the workforce into five categories along the dimensions of symbolic analysis (or the degree of specialized education required), as well as amount of direct interaction the job has with the public.…”

“…With respect to language categories, Alarcón et al () approached the data a bit differently than Robinson‐Cimpian () and Moore et al (). Language background is measured with three mutually exclusive categories: (a) monolingual English is defined as home language is English ; (b) limited English proficient is defined as home language is Spanish with English level not at all , not well , or well ; and (c) fluent bilingual is defined as home language is Spanish with English very well .…”