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Immigrants make up nearly 20% of CT’s workforce

Umito November 5, 2024

Immigrants made up just under 20% of Connecticut’s workforce at the end of 2023, up 2% from 2013, according to census data.

WSHU’s Ebong Udoma I spoke with CT Mirror’s Erica Phillips to discuss her article written with Renata Daou, “Immigrants Make Up a Growing Share of CT’s Workforce,” as part of the Long Story Short collaborative podcast. You can read their story here.

WSHU: Trump’s call for mass deportations has drawn cheers throughout the campaign trail, and a recent Connecticut Mirror election poll found that immigration was a concern for Connecticut voters. Is this what prompted you and your colleague to look into census data on immigrants?

EP: Yeah, that’s exactly it. I normally write about economic issues, and you know, that’s also one of the top concerns of voters. And I began to see that the two problems were very closely linked. Immigrants largely come to the United States to work, and work powers this economy. So I was curious what the role of a growing number of immigrants would be in Connecticut’s economy, where right now we have a ton of vacancies and we need people interested in to work.

WSHU: What did you find? What jobs did immigrants do and to what extent did the immigrant population participate in the labor force?

EP: The immigrant population occupies a growing share of Connecticut’s workforce. So it’s not necessarily about replacing local workers, but more simply, if you look at the overall labor force, the percentage of immigrants has increased, especially in recent years. Today, there has been a strong wave of immigration in recent years. So this makes sense. This matches what we are seeing. So as more immigrants arrive, there are more immigrants in the labor force, and they take up a larger share. This is also due to a huge wave of retirements among native-born workers.

So if you look at this table in our historyside by side, the populations of people who are sort of working between the ages of 18 and 64, I believe, and then people 65 and over, and the native-born population 65 and over are increasing, while the share of immigrants of eight people aged 18 to 64 is on the rise. So there are a couple of dynamics that are happening and if you extrapolate from this data, from the graph that you’re looking at, it’s pretty clear that the workforce had growing gaps, that new people were coming in. in this country, we intervene.

WSHU: Today, immigrants not only contribute to the workforce, but also contribute to the economy by being consumers. What have you found, as far as Connecticut is concerned, that the census data shows, the connection between labor force participation and consumption from an economic perspective?

EP: More people in the United States means more consumers, right? The United States economy is, I think, about 70% consumer economy. This means that most economic activity is due to the products we buy and consume. So you can kind of see how this would work, if more people consumed products that would drive growth in the economy. Economists generally see a net benefit from bringing more immigrants into the country along three lines. The first is that they participate in the labor force, which adds to the potential productivity of the economy. Second, they consume, so they add to the economy’s output by consuming it. And third, it’s a little more complicated. As part of their work, immigrants pay taxes, just as any employee must pay taxes. Yet they often don’t receive as many government benefits as native-born people because they aren’t eligible for them. So if you think about the type of taxes on benefits, it’s a different equation for someone who wasn’t born here.

WSHU: Ultimately, they actually contribute more than they take out of the economy.

EP: This is somewhat the general consensus of economists. However, there are tons of situations in which this is not the case. There are sectors of the economy in which an immigrant and potentially an undocumented immigrant can offer their work for less than the legal wage required by that country and therefore can take work away from someone who would like to do exactly that job or offer this work. exact service. And these situations can really hurt someone whose livelihood depends on the availability of work. If someone comes in and charges less than you’re supposed to charge in that country, it can harm their livelihood. So there are certainly cases where the economic benefits are not obvious.

WSHU: Which sectors attract more immigrants? We currently have a sense in much of the political discourse that low-skilled labor is being lured away. What did you find?

EP: So we looked at what percentage of each sector’s workforce is made up of immigrants, that is, people who were not born here. These may be people who have since become citizens here, or people who work here legally but have not yet become citizens. So, the construction sector, these people, are over-represented in the construction sector, for example. They are over-represented in various service sectors, such as housekeeping and home services. You know, personal services and health services outside the home are the most, and that wasn’t in our story, but it is.

When I looked at skilled worker visa data, the largest number of immigrants work in health care and education. And Connecticut is unique, the Northeast is unique in the sense that we have a very strong higher education sector here, and many immigrants, and particularly fairly skilled immigrants, come to work in higher education institutions from the North-East. So we also attract a lot of that type of immigrant labor.

WSHU: In fact, I saw in your story that Yale University has the largest number of employees on immigrant visas in Connecticut.

EP: Yes, over the last decade. Also, Yale is the top secret location for H-1B visas, which are these skilled worker visas.

WSHU: You’ve spoken to local business owners, what do they have to say about this issue?

EP: Yes, for people who do things like repair, renovation, roofing, construction industry, as I mentioned earlier, the idea that there would be a mass eviction effort causes them a certain worry, a certain dismay, because it could affect their whole life. personal in some cases. And I think a lot of times people want to distinguish between documented and undocumented work. And I understand that in many cases these can be documented. They may be undocumented. It could be a combination or something else.

But I think there is a question, again, the reason a construction company might have concerns is because they don’t have a clear understanding that all of these distinctions and clarifications regarding the exact status of a person would be taken into account in a I quote, I quote, the mass deportation effort. So who will really be sought, detained and prosecuted? it’s not clear. So I think there’s a kind of natural worry: Whatever the case may be, if you’re talking about mass deportation and I have people working for me who weren’t born here, I’m worried.

WSHU: And finally, immigrants as job creators. What did you find there?

EP: Many immigrants come to the United States and enjoy a kind of newfound freedom, the ability to start their own businesses, something they often couldn’t do in their home country. So there are, you know, thousands of new small businesses started and run by immigrants. One of the construction companies I talked to is actually his parents, who were immigrants who started the company, and he inherited it and now employs immigrant workers.

But it’s an incredibly difficult thing to do, but you know, small businesses are, I’ve written about this before, kind of the engine of the economy. Most workers in this country work for small businesses, and they represent, you know, well over 90% of the businesses incorporated in the United States. So having new people starting new businesses and employing people, you know, it’s just another way to contribute to the economy.

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Apre-salomemanzo

Immigrants make up nearly 20% of CT’s workforce

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Immigrants make up nearly 20% of CT’s workforce

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