Immigrant and Other U.S. Workers a Year into the Pandemic: A Focus on Top Immigrant States

In the months preceding the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States’ immigrant labor force was flourishing, enjoying higher employment rates than its U.S.-born counterpart. However, as COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions spread throughout the country, many economic trends were dampened or reversed. “Immigrant and Other U.S. Workers a Year into the Pandemic: A Focus on Top Immigrant States,” a Migration Policy Institute brief authored by Julia Gelatt, Jeanne Batalova and Christopher Levesque, examines the pandemic’s impact by state. Interpreting data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau and other sources, the authors found that five of the 10 states reporting the most job losses (California, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York) also had some of the country’s largest immigrant populations. Indeed, at the onset of the pandemic, immigrant employment levels dropped off more quickly than those of U.S.-born workers. The authors identified the primary factors that tended to correlate with job loss: extensive stay-at-home orders, narrow definitions of “essential workers” in some states, and decreased labor demand in industries where immigrants are over-represented such as leisure and hospitality. As the U.S. begins to recover from the pandemic, many displaced immigrants are reentering the labor market; however, America's economic future in the face of shifting consumer preferences and ever-increasing automation remains uncertain. Thus, the authors emphasize the importance of understanding whether immigrant workers are positioned to adapt to structural changes in the labor market, changes that may be here to stay. (Kyla Schmitt for The Immigrant Learning Center’s Public Education Institute)