Anti-immigration policies often rest on the premise that immigrants worsen native-born employment and wages. This column uses data from 2000 to 2023 to estimate the impact of immigration to the US on national wages and employment, focusing on national rather than local impacts. The authors find that in these two decades, net immigration to the US was heavily college-intensive and raised the wages of less-educated natives. It also increased natives’ employment. Natives’ reallocation into higher-paying, communication-intensive occupations, complementary to those filled by immigrants, is one mechanism behind these gains.



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