riceline.jpg

Workers at the Japanese-owned Ajinomoto Frozen Foods in North Portland packaged brown rice on the production line in 2011. Only 8 percent of workers in the Portland metro area were described by their household's Census form as not speaking English very well.

(Benjamin Brink / The Oregonian / 2011)

Among major U.S. metro areas, Portland has a work force that is light on workers who don't speak English very well -- and particularly light on Spanish-speakers, a new study finds.



Portland-area workers who lack mastery of English earn some of the highest median wages for such workers: $29,000, which ranks in the Top 10 among the nation's 50 largest metro areas. Limited-English workers in the Nashville and Charlottesville, Virginia, metro areas, by contrast, earn median wages of $22,000 a year or less.



The study by the Brookings Institution, "Investing in English Skills," delved into labor statistics for 89 metro areas to see how many workers can't speak English very well, how much education those workers have, what industries they cluster in and how much they earn.



Across the nation's 50 biggest metro areas, 12.4 percent of workers speak English poorly or not at all, including 8 percent whose first language is Spanish, according to household reports to the Census Bureau studied by Brookings. But in the Portland area, just 8 percent of workers speak English poorly or not at all, including 4 percent whose first language is Spanish, the report found.

Not surprisingly, Los Angeles, Miami and New York have a higher share of non-English-speakers in their work forces than Portland does. But so do Seattle, Boston, Austin and Orlando.



Except for having relatively fewer workers with limited English skills, Portland lines up with national averages in many regards, the study found. Workers who don't speak English well tend to have less education and earn less than workers who have mastered English.



But here are some ways Portland's non-English-speaking work force stands out:



>> A very high share speak Asian languages including Chinese and Vietnamese: 31 percent. In most metro areas, 20 percent of workers with limited English skills speak Asian languages.



>> They tend to work in manufacturing, primarily on production lines. Oregon's biggest manufacturing areas are wood products, food and electronics. Nationally, by contrast, workers with poor English skills were most likely to work as groundskeepers or custodians or in food preparation.

But in a subset of metro areas including Portland, Minneapolis, San Jose and Detroit, such workers are likely to work on manufacturing lines. That likely helps explain why Portland, San Jose and Detroit all have Top 10 median incomes for workers with limited English, said study author Jill H. Wilson, a senior research analyst at Brookings.

The Census Bureau defines the Portland metro area as covering seven counties: Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, Yamhill and Columbia, plus Clark and Skamania in Washington.

The Brookings report urges states and metro areas to spend money on English language classes for adults. The report says workers who don't know English well enough have low job productivity, which means low wages for them and lower tax collections and consumer spending for the areas they live in. The report says immigrant workers and their children will account for nearly all the job growth in the U.S. labor force in the next several decades.

It says model programs work well for adults who work and have family responsibilities, and are tied to career-related skills, not strictly speaking English. Washington state's Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training, or I-BEST, with its emphasis on occupational training and track record of getting students to obtain industry certification and college degrees, is a model for the rest of the nation, Wilson said.

The study did not examine how many workers with poor English skills legally reside in the U.S., largely because the Census Bureau doesn't ask that question, Wilson said.

But 87 percent of such workers are immigrants, she said. And other studies suggest that many, but not most, U.S. workers with poor English skills are undocumented.

Nationally, the Brookings study found, there are 19 million U.S. workers with limited ability to speak English, about 16 million of whom work in the 89 metro areas covered by the study.

The Pew Center for Hispanic Studies concluded that there are about 8 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. labor force. Wilson said studies suggest roughly 5 million to 6 million of those have limited English skills.

-- Betsy Hammond

betsyhammond@oregonian.com