Immigrants are more evenly distributed across the skills spectrum than has been widely recognized, according to an analysis just issued by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI).

The report demonstrates that the fastest growth in immigrant employment since 2000 has occurred in middle-skilled jobs -- jobs that require more than a high school but less than a four-year college degree and that typically pay a family-sustaining wage ($30,000 annually per worker).

“In healthcare there continues to be demand - immigrant workers are having success and getting really good jobs,” says Abby Snay, Executive Director of JVS (Jewish Vocational Service) in San Francisco. JVS provides retraining of nurses from many countries. Speaking about a recent graduate, Snay adds, “One immigrant nurse had a job before graduating because through her internship with Highland hospital she learned new online record skills.”

The number of immigrants in middle-skilled jobs grew by fifty percent between 2000 and 2006 -- with the overall distribution of the immigrant and native workforces resembling one another much more closely than has been popularly believed. Pre-recession, 25 percent of native workers and 20 percent of immigrants were employed in high-skilled jobs (requiring a bachelor's degree or more); 29 percent of natives and 24 percent of immigrant workers in middle-skilled occupations; and 46 percent of natives and 56 percent of immigrants in low-skilled jobs (requiring high school or less education).

"Although construction has still not recovered from the hard hit it took from the recession, this study confirms what we see at the Hayward Day Labor Center.  Many recent immigrants work middle-skilled positions in construction, landscaping, and painting which can be family-sustaining,” said Micah Clatterbaugh, Job Developer & Legal Advocate of the Hayward Day Labor Center.  “We try to do our part by providing skills and safety training for our members, making them more desirable employees."

The study, which examines employment in the U.S. workforce and in four key sectors (IT, health care, construction and hospitality), finds that employment growth for immigrants far outpaced native growth rates between 1990 and 2006 in the total economy and the four industries surveyed. Between 2000 and 2006, immigrants accounted for more than half of all net job growth (5.5 million of 10 million jobs).

Among the top findings:

•             By 2006, in three of the four sectors surveyed (all but construction), the percentage of immigrant workers earning family-sustaining wages equaled or exceeded the share for native workers. Immigrants earned more in part because they were better educated than natives in the health care and IT sectors. Their wages and educational attainment were roughly equivalent in hospitality.

•             Immigrants have been able to advance into middle-skilled jobs that pay family-sustaining wages without four-year college degrees.

•             Because of striking gender disparities across the four sectors, the recession has taken a far heavier toll on immigrant men, who are much more heavily represented in the construction and IT sectors while women dominate the growing health care industry.

•             Steep job losses for immigrant workers in construction (as much as 30 percent in some occupations) led to a dramatic fall in the number of middle-skilled jobs available to immigrants with comparatively low educational attainment and limited English skills.

•             "Middle-skilled jobs represent important pathways for immigrant mobility. Fully 60 percent of immigrants in middle-skilled jobs earned family-sustaining wages before the recession's onset compared to 28 percent of those in low-skilled jobs," said MPI Senior Vice President Michael Fix, a report co-author. "But with the decimation of construction, the prospects for immigrants with little formal education and limited English skills have weakened significantly."

• “California has several areas disproportionately affected by the real estate bust, so one would expect the construction slowdown there to be at least as severe, if not more severe, than nationally,” said Randy Capps, the report’s lead author. “Health care and hospitality are probably similar to the national picture.”