HMN 2025: How Expert finds entry to high-paying jobs—not unequal pay for a similar job—is the most important driver of immigrant wage gaps

Immigrants within the United States earn 10.6% lower than equally educated U.S.-born staff, largely as a result of they’re concentrated in lower-paying industries, occupations and corporations, based on a significant new study printed in Nature, co-authored by a University of Massachusetts Amherst sociologist who research equal alternative in employment.

The analysis—one of the complete international comparisons of immigrant labor market integration up to now—analyzes linked employer-employee knowledge from over 13 million folks throughout 9 superior economies in Europe and North America.

The U.S. outcomes, drawn from a singular mixture of Census Bureau, earnings and employer knowledge, reveal that solely about one-quarter of the wage gap is because of pay inequality throughout the similar job and firm. Instead, the bulk stems from structural obstacles that restrict immigrants’ entry to better-paying workplaces.

“These findings are essential as a result of they present that a lot of the immigrant wage gap is not about being paid much less for a similar work—it is about not entering into the highest-paying jobs and companies within the first place,” says Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, professor of sociology and founding director of the Center for Employment Equity at UMass Amherst.

Key U.S. findings

• First-generation immigrants with authorized standing within the U.S. earn 10.6% lower than comparable native-born staff.
• 3.4%, a 3rd of that gap, is attributable to unequal pay for a similar job on the similar employer.
• No knowledge was accessible on second-generation immigrants within the U.S., however different international locations confirmed persistent however smaller gaps into the subsequent technology.

The study means that efforts to shut immigrant wage gaps ought to deal with growing immigrants’ entry to raised jobs and companies. Promising approaches embody:

• Language and abilities coaching
• Recognition of international credentials
• Access to skilled networks
• Employer anti-bias interventions

“Improving job entry is crucial,” says co-author Andrew Penner, professor of sociology on the University of California, Irvine. “This means addressing the obstacles that maintain immigrants out of the highest-paying companies and occupations.”

As of 2023, immigrants constituted roughly 14% of the U.S. inhabitants, totaling over 47 million folks. There are roughly 1 million new long-term everlasting residents yearly. U.S. immigration coverage encompasses numerous pathways, together with family-based migration, employment-based visas, the Diversity Visa Lottery and humanitarian safety.

Immigration has been a defining function of the U.S. inhabitants since its founding, with distinct waves formed by financial wants, political developments and international conflicts.

“For nearly 250 years, we’ve been a nation of immigrants, and this pay gap signifies that we are able to do extra as a rustic to assist folks following the paths of our forebears understand the American dream,” Tomaskovic-Devey provides.

Global comparability

The study consists of 13.5 million people in 9 immigrant-receiving international locations: the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden.

The U.S. had one of many smallest pay gaps (10.6%) among the many 9 international locations studied. By contrast, Canada confirmed a 27.5% gap and Spain a 29.3% gap. The most favorable outcomes for immigrants have been in Sweden (7% gap) and Denmark (9.2%).

The authors establish two predominant sources of the immigrant-native pay gap:

1. Sorting—Immigrants usually tend to work in lower-paying industries, occupations and companies.
2. Within-job inequality—In all international locations, immigrants are paid lower than natives doing the identical job for a similar employer, however these gaps are comparatively small.

Across the 9 international locations, three-quarters of the 17.9% common wage gap for immigrants was as a result of sorting; simply one-quarter stemmed from unequal pay inside jobs. In the U.S., this sample was constant: structural job entry—not wage discrimination—was the dominant drive.

The study additionally exposes persistent disadvantages for immigrants from sure world areas, together with Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. Across all international locations, immigrants from these areas confronted bigger wage gaps than immigrants from Western or Asian international locations.

The worldwide analysis is the newest in a sequence of high-profile publications from a group spanning over a dozen international locations in North America and Europe that has been investigating the dynamics of office earnings distributions for the final decade.