The charge that immigrants are taking jobs from U.S.-born Black workers has made its way from conspiracy circles to the broader public conversation this election season. Several economists have refuted this: they say that despite persistent discrimination and systemic issues, Black Americans are facing one of the best job markets in recent times as a result of historically low unemployment rates. Yet this rhetoric of lost “Black jobs” has found sympathetic ears in the Black community and beyond. Could there be any truth to it? Have immigrants displaced U.S.-born Black workers?
The reality is that the number of U.S. jobs has continually grown, so that even as foreign-born workers have claimed a growing share of the U.S. labor market and expanded their presence across industries, it does not appear that this has occurred at the expense of U.S.-born Black workers. At the same time, immigrants’ movement across industries and geographic regions may explain why the foreign-born workforce has become more visible, creating perceptions of a displacement effect in the U.S.-born Black community that does not actually exist.
Different Shares of a Bigger Pie
Seeing immigrants as competition for U.S. workers requires believing there is a fixed number of jobs in the economy. This “lump of labor fallacy” is flawed: because immigrants are themselves consumers, they increase the demand for goods and services, thereby creating job opportunities for native and foreign workers alike. Some immigrants also directly create jobs by starting businesses, while many others complement the U.S.-born workforce by filling jobs that U.S. workers are not trained to fill or avoid due to the wages or working conditions. This is why some argue that proposals to deport millions of unauthorized immigrants could be harmful to the economy: along with shrinking the size of the U.S. labor force, removing immigrants would eliminate jobs held by the U.S.-born population.
To understand the impact of immigrants on the overall workforce, this commentary examines U.S. Census Bureau data on prime-age workers at four points in time: 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2022, the most recent year available. The number of all U.S. prime-age workers (those ages 25 to 54, who tend to have the strongest labor market attachment) substantially increased from 97 million in 1990 to 118 million in 2022. During this same period, the foreign-born share of prime-age workers nearly doubled, from 10 percent to 19 percent. The decline in the native-born share was primarily driven by a decline in the number of non-Latino White U.S.-born workers, not U.S.-born Black workers.
Figure 1. U.S. Prime-Age Workers (ages 25-54), by Nativity and Race, 1990-2022
Notes: The immigrants category represents all foreign-born prime-age workers without regard to race, ethnicity, or immigration status. The Black racial category excludes those identifying as Latino.
Sources: Source: Migration Policy Institute (MPI) analysis of U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 American Community Survey (ACS) and decennial censuses for 1990, 2000, and 2010.
Even as immigrants have represented a growing share of the U.S. labor force, the pie has gotten bigger too, such that U.S.-born Black workers have maintained their share of the job market and have also contributed to sustaining growth in the U.S.-born population. There were 2,357,000 more U.S.-born Black prime-age workers in 2022 than in 1990, partially compensating for the 10,227,000 U.S.-born White workers who left the job market.
Does this mean that U.S.-born White workers have been displaced by immigrants? No. In tandem with demographic trends in the general population, the representation of immigrants and natives among prime-age workers has changed over time. Aging of baby boomers and lower birth rates mean that more White workers have retired from the workforce than the number in younger cohorts that have joined. The total number of U.S.-born White individuals of prime age in and outside the labor force declined from 78.4 million in 1990 to 67.9 million in 2022. The opposite is true for the U.S.-born Black population and for immigrants: for the same age group and period, they both experienced population growth.
Figure 2. U.S. Prime Working-Age Population (ages 25-54), 1990 and 2022
Note: The Black and White categories exclude those identifying as Latino.
Source: Source: MPI analysis of U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 ACS and 1990 decennial census.
Why Do Things Feel Different?
At the aggregate level, not much has changed for U.S.-born Black workers in terms of their share of prime-age workers. But the growing presence of immigrants has become more visible in some of the primary industries of employment and regions of residence of U.S.-born Black residents. Thus, the workplace looks different, which may feed the perception held by some that immigrants are “taking over.”
To measure the change in composition of workers across industries, it is useful to examine the respective shares of workers in the top 20 industries that employed U.S.-born Black workers in 1990. Computing the change in those shares over time permits identification of specific industries where the foreign-born status and racial makeup of workers have changed the most.
Table 1. Change in Worker Share in Top 20 Industries of Employment in 1990 for U.S.-Born Black Prime-Age Workers, 1990 to 2022
Note: Top 20 industries of employment for U.S.-born Black prime-age workers in 1990; together these 20 industries employed half of U.S.-born Black prime-age workers that year.
Source: MPI analysis of U.S. Census Bureau, 2022 ACS and 1990 decennial census.
Notably, the immigrant share increased in all top industries surveyed, with the picture more mixed for U.S.-born Black workers, who saw their share increase in eight of the 20 industries. The largest gains for U.S.-born Black workers in share and numbers of jobs were in trucking service (350,000 jobs), eating and drinking places (233,000), department stores (122,000), and insurance (101,000).
And while the share of U.S.-born Black workers relative to immigrant workers decreased in 12 industries, the increases in number of jobs in the top 20 industries far exceeded the ones lost.
Another important change has been the convergence of both U.S.-born Black and immigrant workers on southern states, increasing opportunities for them to work alongside each other in industries where immigrants were less present just a few decades ago. In 1990, 54 percent of U.S.-born Black prime-age workers lived in the South, a share that rose to 61 percent in 2022. The spatial distribution of immigrants has changed significantly over the past three decades. In 2022, the largest share of prime-age immigrant workers, 35 percent, lived in the South, up from 23 percent in 1990 (and in absolute numbers, surpassed U.S.-born Black workers).
Same Position, More Diverse Workplace
The highlight remains that between 1990 and 2022, U.S.-born Black workers have kept the same share (10 percent) of a growing prime-age labor market but their distribution across industries has changed—in some cases quite significantly.
In 1990, construction was the primary sector of employment for U.S.-born Black men, and they represented 8 percent of the sector’s male workers while immigrant men were 10 percent. By 2022, the gap had deepened significantly: the Black male share had decreased to 5 percent, with immigrants representing 28 percent of all prime-age male construction workers.
Trucking service moved from the sixth largest sector of employment of U.S.-born Black men to the first sector in 2022, replacing construction. In recent years, Black influencers have promoted this industry as being lucrative for Black women and men, not only as drivers but also owner-operators.
U.S.-born Black women have also moved into new industries over time, such as insurance and health services, but the shift hasn’t been as stark as for U.S.-born Black men. For example, while U.S.-born Black prime-age women represented 14 percent of hospital workers in 1990—with the sector the largest industry of employment for that group, with about 505,000 U.S.-born Black women—their share had declined slightly to 12 percent as of 2022. During that period, prime-age immigrant women increased their share in the sector from 9 percent to 15 percent. Interestingly, in 2022, one out of five prime-age immigrant women working in hospitals identified as Black, and they came primarily from Jamaica, Haiti, Nigeria, Ethiopia, or Ghana. This points to the reality that the overall Black population in the United States is itself increasingly diverse.
A Misplaced Focus
Scapegoating immigrants for the changes experienced by U.S.-born Black workers distracts from questions including what the movement across industries, such as from construction to trucking, means for U.S.-born Black men and their families, particularly in southern states. The controversy also obscures questions on how governments can use immigration policy to ensure an adequate supply of workers as the U.S. population ages and amid low unemployment levels, as well as how policymakers and employers can ensure a dynamic, flexible, and diverse labor market where workers can reinvent themselves.
As U.S.-born and immigrant workers increasingly work side-by-side, and as ongoing global forces and technological changes reshape the economy’s mix of occupations, it is to be expected that jobs and the composition of the workforce will, and perhaps should, change. Policymakers should consider increased investments in training and retraining to help all U.S. workers adapt. Such investments can increase workers’ well-being and encourage them to pursue opportunities that better match their talents and interests, independent of their race, ethnicity, or nativity. This will in turn benefit the U.S. economy, through greater productivity and innovation.
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