Immigrant Employment Through the Great Recession: Individual Characteristics and Metropolitan Contexts

Abstract

Immigrants continue to settle in metropolitan areas across the United States and bring significant changes to various urban labor markets. The current Great Recession which officially started in December 2007 and ended in June 2009 (National Bureau of Economic Research, 2010) further intensified the debate on immigration. It is important to understand how immigrants fared through this economic downturn and their evolving employment patterns within a diversity of metropolitan areas. Using American Community Survey (ACS) data for 2007 and 2009, this paper traces the employment outcomes of immigrants compared to nativeborn workers before and after the recession across the 100 largest metropolitan areas. Distinctions are made between Asian immigrants and Latino immigrants. Regression analysis further tests the effect of individual human capital characteristics and metropolitan economic, demographic, and policy contexts on immigrant's likelihood of securing employment during this time period.