Читать книгу To Be An American - Bill Ong Hing - Страница 25

Although one-third of its population is foreign-born and accounts for as much as 70 percent of the employment growth, immigration does not have a negative impact on job opportunities for native workers in Los Angeles either. However, new arrivals do have a slight adverse effect on earlier groups of immigrants. The group that may suffer from Mexican migration is the rest of the Latino labor force. Job growth in Mexican-dominated industries, such as manufacturing, was 25 percent less than the national average in the 1970s; Latino wage growth was 40 percent less. Latino immigrants in particular hold jobs in manufacturing (e.g., textile, apparel, and furniture).

At the same time, African American job opportunities seemed to have expanded, particularly in the white-collar sector. As in New York, African Americans in Los Angeles have experienced noticeable employment gains in the public sector. Both African American teenagers and adults experienced a job rate increase larger than the national average through the early 1980s. Their wages increased faster than the state average, even in blue-collar work with large proportions of immigrants. Despite a concern over increased joblessness among young or less educated African Americans, the presence of immigrants increased the earnings and opportunities of African Americans who were employed.²⁵

Thus, immigrants may create more jobs than they take in fields such as communications and utilities, but take more jobs than they create in manufacturing, retail trade, and restaurants in places like Los Angeles and New York. The effect is a “redistribution” of jobs for native workers away from manufacturing and lower-skilled services toward the white-collar sector, particularly in management and the professions. By 1993, almost a quarter of African Americans, but only one in ten Latinos working in Los Angeles held professional or managerial positions.²⁶

Specific research on less skilled workers in the West provides a better understanding of the effect of less skilled immigrants on wages. By comparing wages among less skilled workers in other parts of the country, one finds that the increase of less skilled Latino and Asian immigrants in the West adversely affects the wages of natives. But through immigration, the West has maintained a steady supply of low-wage workers, which helps to explain why wages will not rise as much. In New England, for example, rising schooling levels has reduced the supply of unskilled workers over the past twenty years, which in turn raises wages among unskilled workers.²⁷