A Comparative Analysis of the Labor Market Impact of International Migration: Canada, Mexico, and the United States

NBER Working Paper No. 12327

Issued in June 2006

NBER Program(s):International Trade and Investment, Labor Studies



Using data drawn from the Canadian, Mexican, and U.S. Censuses, we find a numerically comparable and statistically significant inverse relation between immigrant-induced shifts in labor supply and wages in each of the three countries: A 10 percent labor supply shift is associated with a 3 to 4 percent opposite-signed change in wages. Despite the similarity in the wage response, the impact of migration on the wage structure differs significantly across countries. International migration narrowed wage inequality in Canada; increased it in the United States; and reduced the relative wage of workers at the bottom of the skill distribution in Mexico.

References as Text (21 K)

Machine-readable bibliographic record - MARC, RIS, BibTeX

Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w12327

Users who downloaded this paper also downloaded* these: