Dropping Out: Immigrant Entry and Native Exit From the Labor Market, 2000-2005 - by Steven Camarota - The New Coalition for Economic and Social Change

Public Policy Research

Dropping Out: Immigrant Entry and Native Exit From the Labor Market, 2000-2005

Written By: Steven Camarota
Published In: Backgrounder
Publication Date: March 1, 2006
Publisher: Center for Immigration Studies

Advocates of legalizing illegal aliens and increasing legal immigration argue that there are no Americans to fill low-wage jobs that require relatively little education. However, data collected by the Census Bureau show that, even prior to Hurricane Katrina, there were almost four million unemployed adult natives (age 18 to 64) with just a high school degree or less, and another 19 million not in the labor force. Perhaps most troubling, the share of these less-educated adult natives in the labor force has declined steadily since 2000.