This paper demonstrates that low-skilled Mexican-born immigrants' location choices in the U.S. respond strongly to changes in local labor demand, and that this geographic elasticity helps equalize spatial differences in labor market outcomes for low-skilled native workers, who are much less responsive. We leverage the substantial geographic variation in employment losses that occurred during Great Recession, and our results confirm the standard finding that high-skilled populations are quite geographically responsive to employment opportunities while low-skilled populations are much less so. However, low-skilled immigrants, especially those from Mexico, respond even more strongly than high-skilled native-born workers. Moreover, we show that natives living in metro areas with a substantial Mexican-born population are insulated from the effects of local labor demand shocks compared to those in places with few Mexicans. The reallocation of the Mexican-born workforce reduced the incidence of local demand shocks on low-skilled natives' employment outcomes by more than 50 percent.

中文翻译：

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移民平衡当地劳动力市场：大衰退的证据


本文表明，墨西哥出生的低技能移民在美国的选址对当地劳动力需求的变化有强烈反应，这种地理弹性有助于平衡低技能本土工人劳动力市场结果的空间差异，而这些工人的劳动力市场规模要小得多。反应灵敏。我们利用了大衰退期间就业损失的巨大地理差异，我们的结果证实了标准发现，即高技能人口对就业机会在地理上的反应相当灵敏，而低技能人口的反应则要差得多。然而，低技能移民，尤其是来自墨西哥的移民，比高技能本土出生的工人的反应更为强烈。此外，我们发现，与墨西哥人很少的地方相比，居住在拥有大量墨西哥出生人口的大都市地区的当地人不会受到当地劳动力需求冲击的影响。墨西哥出生的劳动力的重新分配将当地需求冲击对低技能本地人就业结果的影响降低了 50% 以上。