Amy Wax - Immigration and Less-Educated American Workers

Overview

The speaker (Amy Wax) agrees with the paper’s central thesis. She argues that the surge of low-educated immigrants—largely Hispanic, but also other groups—has distracted politically and socially from a more direct problem: declining low-skill male labor-force participation among native-born Americans.

Wax says the issue is not primarily a “labor demand” shortage. She also criticizes how the immigration/displacement debate can act like a “narcotic effect” on discussion—especially for low-wage employers and the public—because immigration can supply labor that masks worsened native work participation and conditions.

Two Major Points

1. Partial displacement driven by employer preferences (demand-side)

Wax argues that immigration reduces job opportunities for native workers not because immigrants “create demand,” but because employers actively prefer certain immigrant groups over native low-skill workers.

She cites ethnographic studies and employer interview research (mostly from the 1990s) collected later by political scientist David Sren/Scrne in a chapter of After Civil Rights. According to these studies, employers:

• Strongly prefer recent immigrant workers (Hispanic and Asian, especially) for many entry-level jobs.
• Disfavor white low-skilled workers and are especially reluctant about hiring Black unskilled workers from inner-city/ghetto contexts.
• Justify these preferences using stereotypes about work ethic and “soft skills,” such as punctuality, reliability, diligence, willingness to work despite pain/injury, loyalty, low oppositional behavior, and similar traits.

Wax treats this as consistent with displacement: as immigrant labor increases in construction, service, farming, and restaurant work, fewer native workers obtain those jobs. She also notes a possible discouragement effect—native (and Black) workers may stop trying if they expect they won’t be hired.

She emphasizes that the evidence is largely anecdotal and older, and that academic interest in this area has faded.

2. Native workforce quality has deteriorated (supply-side)

Beyond displacement, Wax claims there is evidence that the quality and work readiness of the unskilled native workforce has worsened over the last 15–20 years. She points to:

• Changes in family structure, especially more single-parent families, which she says harm socialization of lower-income boys (citing David Autor and others).
• Observable indicators, including:
  • spikes in positive drug tests for job applicants (e.g., from a firm like Quest),
  • rising employer complaints about worker unreliability (absenteeism, tardiness, surliness),
  • and incidents such as a manager stating workers don’t want food-service work because it’s “too cold and too wet.”
• Broader health and disability-related barriers, including an expert’s claim that about one-third of high school graduates can’t qualify for military service due to fitness failures, plus criminal records and drug problems.
• Everyday labor-market patterns, where certain jobs appear to be performed almost exclusively by immigrants (e.g., construction and some services), while native workers stand idle nearby.

Contrast with a “Standard Progressive Narrative”

Wax contrasts her view with a “standard Progressive narrative,” which she says attributes native joblessness primarily to structural forces such as:

• job disappearance,
• globalization,
• corporate greed,
• and government/safety-net issues.

In her view, that narrative downplays worker readiness and cultural attitudes toward work and denies immigration’s role in masking labor-market problems.

She argues that the immigration debate prevents confronting what she sees as uncomfortable realities, including:

• employer incentives to hire cheaper immigrant labor,
• ideological incentives among elites to maintain the structural story, and
• the possibility that “shock therapy” (closing immigration channels for low-skilled labor) would not solve the problem due to contemporary attitudes and the alleged deterioration of the workforce.

Presenters or Contributors

• Amy Wax (speaker)