A study by three economists from the University of Michigan and the University of California found that the increase in skilled foreign labor through H-1B visas have led to lower wages and employment for U.S. tech workers.
The study analyzed employment, wages, and other data over an eight-year period from 1994-2001. The study found that without H-1B visas the tech-industry wages would have increased by 5.1% and employment of U.S. workers in the field would have increased by 10.8%.
One of the authors of the study, John Bound, said that they focused on that specific eight-year period because it was the longest stretch of time when employers claimed all available H-1B visas. He also said that, “There is little reason to believe the overall impact of high-skilled immigrants on the U.S. economy has changed dramatically since 2001.”
Jennifer Hunt, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor under President Obama, commented that she would have liked the authors to focus on more recent time periods but that this paper is “the best work we have by a long way” in quantifying the “negative” effects of high-skilled immigration.
Read more on this story at The Wall Street Journal.
Read the full study here.
