The May 3 update includes the full methodology appendix and a statistical profile of Mexican immigrants in the United States.

The largest wave of immigration in history from a single country to the United States has come to a standstill. After four decades that brought 12 million current immigrants—most of whom came illegally—the net migration flow from Mexico to the United States has stopped and may have reversed, according to a new analysis of government data from both countries by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center.

The standstill appears to be the result of many factors, including the weakened U.S. job and housing construction markets, heightened border enforcement, a rise in deportations, the growing dangers associated with illegal border crossings, the long-term decline in Mexico’s birth rates and broader economic conditions in Mexico.

It is possible that the Mexican immigration wave will resume as the U.S. economy recovers. Even if it doesn’t, it has already secured a place in the record books. The U.S. today has more immigrants from Mexico alone—12.0 million—than any other country in the world has from all countries of the world.¹ Some 30% of all current U.S. immigrants were born in Mexico. The next largest sending country—China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan)—accounts for just 5% of the nation’s current stock of about 40 million immigrants.

Looking back over the entire span of U.S. history, no country has ever seen as many of its people immigrate to this country as Mexico has in the past four decades. However, when measured not in absolute numbers but as a share of the immigrant population at the time, immigration waves from Germany and Ireland in the late 19th century equaled or exceeded the modern wave from Mexico.

Beyond its size, the most distinctive feature of the modern Mexican wave has been the unprecedented share of immigrants who have come to the U.S. illegally. Just over half (51%) of all current Mexican immigrants are unauthorized, and some 58% of the estimated 11.2 million unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. are Mexican (Passel and Cohn, 2011).

The sharp downward trend in net migration from Mexico began about five years ago and has led to the first significant decrease in at least two decades in the unauthorized Mexican population. As of 2011, some 6.1 million unauthorized Mexican immigrants were living in the U.S., down from a peak of nearly 7 million in 2007, according to Pew Hispanic Center estimates based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Over the same period, the population of authorized immigrants from Mexico rose modestly, from 5.6 million in 2007 to 5.8 million in 2011.

The net standstill in Mexican-U.S. migration flows is the result of two opposite trend lines that have converged in recent years. During the five-year period from 2005 to 2010, a total of 1.4 million Mexicans immigrated to the United States, down by more than half from the 3 million who had done so in the five-year period of 1995 to 2000. Meantime, the number of Mexicans and their children who moved from the U.S. to Mexico between 2005 and 2010 rose to 1.4 million, roughly double the number who had done so in the five-year period a decade before. While it is not possible to say so with certainty, the trend lines within this latest five-year period suggest that return flow to Mexico probably exceeded the inflow from Mexico during the past year or two.

Of the 1.4 million people who migrated from the U.S. to Mexico since 2005, including about 300,000 U.S.-born children, most did so voluntarily, but a significant minority were deported and remained in Mexico. Firm data on this phenomenon are sketchy, but Pew Hispanic Center estimates based on government data from both countries suggest that 5% to 35% of these returnees may not have moved voluntarily.

In contrast to the decrease of the Mexican born, the U.S. immigrant population from all countries has continued to grow and numbered 39.6 million in 2011, according to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey.

In addition, the number of Mexican-Americans in the U.S.—both immigrants and U.S.-born residents of Mexican ancestry—is continuing to rise. The Mexican-American population numbered 33 million in 2010.² As reported previously (Pew Hispanic Center, 2011), between 2000 and 2010 births surpassed immigration as the main reason for growth of the Mexican-American population.

The population of Mexican-born residents of the U.S. is larger than the population of most countries or states. Among Mexican-born people worldwide, one-in-ten lives in the United States.

This report has five additional sections. The next section analyzes statistics on migration between Mexico and the United States from data sources in both countries. The third uses mainly Mexican data to examine characteristics, experience and future intentions of Mexican migrants handed over to Mexican authorities by U.S. law enforcement agencies. The fourth, based on U.S. data, examines trends in border enforcement statistics. The fifth looks at changing conditions in Mexico that might affect migration trends. The report’s last section looks at characteristics of Mexican-born immigrants in the U.S., using U.S. Census Bureau data. The appendix explains the report’s methodology and data sources.

Among the report’s other main findings from these sections:

Changing Patterns of Border Enforcement

• In spite of (and perhaps because of) increases in the number of U.S. Border Patrol agents, apprehensions of Mexicans trying to cross the border illegally have plummeted in recent years—from more than 1 million in 2005 to 286,000 in 2011—a likely indication that fewer unauthorized migrants are trying to cross. Border Patrol apprehensions of all unauthorized immigrants are now at their lowest level since 1971.
• As apprehensions at the border have declined, deportations of unauthorized Mexican immigrants–some of them picked up at work sites or after being arrested for other criminal violations–have risen to record levels. In 2010, 282,000 unauthorized Mexican immigrants were repatriated by U.S. authorities, via deportation or the expedited removal process.

Changing Characteristics of Return Migrants

• Although most unauthorized Mexican immigrants sent home by U.S. authorities say they plan to try to return, a growing share say they will not try to come back to the U.S. According to a survey by Mexican authorities of repatriated immigrants, 20% of labor migrants in 2010 said they would not return, compared with just 7% in 2005.
• A growing share of unauthorized Mexican immigrants sent home by U.S. authorities had been in the United States for a year or more—27% in 2010, up from 6% in 2005. Also, 17% were apprehended at work or at home in 2010, compared with just 3% in 2005.

Demographic Trends Related to Mexican Migration

• In Mexico, among the wide array of trends with potential impact on the decision to emigrate, the most significant demographic change is falling fertility: As of 2009, a typical Mexican woman was projected to have an average 2.4 children in her lifetime, compared with 7.3 for her 1960 counterpart.
• Compared with other immigrants to the U.S., Mexican-born immigrants are younger, poorer, less-educated, less likely to be fluent in English and less likely to be naturalized citizens.

The ACS is the largest household survey in the United States, with a sample of about 3 million addresses. It covers the topics previously covered in the long form of the decennial census. The ACS is designed to provide estimates of the size and characteristics of the resident population, which includes persons living in households and group quarters.

The specific data sources for this statistical profile are the 1% sample of the 2010 ACS Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) and the 5% sample of the 2000 Census IPUMS provided by the University of Minnesota.¹ The IPUMS assigns uniform codes, to the extent possible, to data collected by the decennial census and the ACS from 1850 to 2010. Due to differences in the way in which the IPUMS and Census Bureau adjust income data and assign poverty status, data provided in Tables 27 – 37 might differ from data on these variables that are provided by the Census Bureau. For more information about the IPUMS, including variable definition and sampling error, please visit http://usa.ipums.org/usa/design.shtml. To learn more about the sampling strategy and associated error of the 2000 Census or the 2010 American Community Survey, please refer to Chapter 8 of the U.S. Census Summary File 3: 2000 and U.S. Census Design Methodology, respectively.

For the purposes of this statistical portrait, the foreign born include those persons who identified as naturalized citizens or non-citizens. Persons born in Puerto Rico and other outlying territories of the U.S. are included in the native-born population.

According to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS), the U.S. population in 2010 included 39.9 million foreign-born residents. This estimate, the latest available for the foreign-born population, is 1.5 million, or 4%, higher than the survey’s 38.5 million estimate in 2009.¹ A variety of additional data, however, suggest that both the absolute increase and the percentage increase in the foreign-born population were substantially smaller. An analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center, concludes that the growth in the foreign-born population from 2009 to 2010 is a markedly lower 616,000, or 1.6% (see Table 1).

The Pew Hispanic Center revision to the estimated growth in the foreign-born population was undertaken to account for changes between 2009 and 2010 in the Census Bureau’s assumptions about population composition that underlie the reported ACS estimates. This type of discontinuity in assumptions is not uncommon in government datasets, and government agencies often supply guidance to users on dealing with the issue. Pew Hispanic’s revised estimate smoothes out these discontinuities by employing the Census Bureau’s own revised and consistent set of underlying population estimates.

When the ACS data for 2009 are revised for consistency with the assumptions that underlie the 2010 ACS, the foreign-born population in 2009 is estimated to have been 39.3 million, 850,000 higher than the original ACS estimate. As a result, the growth in the foreign-born population from 2009 to 2010 is estimated to be less than originally reported (Table 1).

To appreciate the reasons for the gap between the estimates reported by the Census Bureau and the revisions produced by the Pew Hispanic Center, it helps to understand how the government agency collects and processes statistics. The 2010 ACS is based on the latest information from the 2010 Decennial Census; the 2009 ACS is based on the latest information available for that survey—updates of the 2000 Decennial Census. This report discusses how the difference in underlying data can affect estimates of the change in population from 2009 to 2010. A methodological section explains how the ACS estimates for 2009 are revised to make them consistent with the 2010 data. The analysis in this report is intended to clarify the extent to which the apparent change in the foreign-born population from 2009 to 2010 stems from inconsistencies in the underlying population estimates.²

Additional Data Show Similar Pattern

Additional data from other sources indicate that the Pew Hispanic revised estimate of the growth of the foreign-born population is more accurate than implied by the reported ACS data. For example, similar data from the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly household survey conducted by the Census Bureau, show a drop in average annual change in the foreign-born population over the decade—from 880,000 per year for 2000-2006 to 510,000 per year for 2006-2010.³ These CPS data have been reweighted by the Pew Hispanic Center to produce a consistent dataset and adjusted to correct for undercount.

Unpublished analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center of ACS data on respondents’ year of immigration and residence one year ago show a decrease in arrivals of immigrants in 2009 compared with earlier in the decade. Additionally, other sources (e.g., National Research Council, 2011; U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 2011) also point to a slowdown of immigration flows, especially those of unauthorized migrants, associated with the onset of the Great Recession in late 2007.

Survey Changes Throughout the Decade

The need for revision of the 2009 ACS estimates stems from the fact that the ACS samples the U.S. population; unlike the decennial census, it does not count the entire population. Therefore, its basic population totals—for the country, states and smaller geographic areas, subdivided by age, gender, race and other characteristics—are imposed from other sources. ACS respondents are assigned sample weights that total to these pre-specified population numbers.

However, population estimates from the 2009 ACS and the 2010 ACS are “mismatched.” Sample weights in the 2009 ACS are based on a postcensal population estimate for 2009 that the Census Bureau derived by updating the 2000 Census using government records for births, deaths, immigration and migration (see Terminology). Sample weights in the 2010 ACS are based on an estimate for July 1, 2010, that is derived from the 2010 Census population count.

In other words, the 2009 ACS estimates are based on data tied to the 2000 Census and do not reflect the latest information on the size and the characteristics of the U.S. population as determined by the 2010 Census, a more relevant year.

Inconsistencies between the decennial census population counts and the population estimates during the previous decade are nothing new. However, until this decade, this discontinuity did not affect detailed data about the characteristics of the U.S. population, such as the number who are foreign born, because such data at the state and local level came only once a decade from the decennial census itself, via the long form that was mailed to a sample of the nation’s population. But the long form was last used in the 2000 Census. Since 2005, such data now come every year from the ACS, a long-form survey that includes data from more than 2 million households per year.

Discrepancies in Data for Some Groups

Although the 2010 Census national and state counts agreed very closely with the expected total based on the Bureau’s postcensal population estimates for 2010 (Cohn, 2011), there were notable discrepancies for some subgroups—especially those that are prominent in the foreign-born population. This suggests there are similar issues with the 2009 postcensal population estimates that were the basis for the 2009 ACS.

According to an earlier Pew Hispanic analysis, the 2010 Census counted nearly 1 million more Hispanics than would be expected (Passel and Cohn, 2011), or 1.9% more than expected, based on the postcensal population estimates for 2010. The count of non-Hispanic single-race Asians also was higher than would be expected—by about 700,000, or 5%.⁴ These groups account for almost three-quarters of immigrants. Thus, because the 2009 ACS total for the foreign-born population is derived from the same series of postcensal population estimates, it also can be considered to be an underestimate.

To account for differences between the postcensal estimates used to weight the 2009 ACS and the 2010 Census-based data used to weight the 2010 ACS, the Pew Hispanic Center adjusted the 2009 ACS to agree with the Census Bureau’s recently published new intercensal estimates for 2000 to 2010 (see Terminology and the methodological appendix). These estimates “smooth the transition from one decennial census count to the next” (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011a) by adjusting the published postcensal estimates for each year so the trend is in line with the 2010 Census results. The Census Bureau does this by distributing throughout the decade any discontinuities between those estimates and population counts in the 2010 Census (i.e., the error of closure, see Terminology). The biggest differences between the reported and revised ACS estimates for 2009 are for young adult Asians and Hispanics.⁵

It is not unusual to see discontinuities attributable to changes in weighting or population counts in government data series. Every January, for example, new population estimates are introduced into the Current Population Survey, leading to discontinuities in estimates of the labor force and the number of employed and unemployed workers. The government agencies involved typically provide users with guidance on the impact of the changes (e.g., Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011), but they often do not revise previously released data. Only rarely does the Census Bureau issue a new set of survey weights that would enable data users to re-estimate time series and detailed measures.⁶

Revisions to ACS Weights

The adjustments to the 2009 ACS data are based on sample weights revised by the Pew Hispanic Center that are derived from intercensal population estimates for 2009. The originally reported 2009 ACS data are based on sample weights derived from the postcensal estimates for 2009. The revised weights are derived using a simplified version of the final stages of the ACS weighting procedure. (See the methodological appendix for more details of the revised weighting procedures.) As such, they should be considered approximations to full revisions that would incorporate new information from the 2010 Census into the full ACS weighting methods for 2009.

The estimate of the size of the foreign-born population is created by summing the revised survey weights of ACS respondents who say they are foreign born. This method is similar to that used by the Census Bureau to arrive at its estimate, except for the difference in the survey weights.

Analysis of changes in the foreign-born population throughout the 2000-2010 decade will require consistent data for years other than 2010, 2009 and 2000. These 2009 revisions are a first step in producing a consistent time series of ACS data for the decade. The Pew Hispanic Center plans to produce revised weights for ACS public use files for 2005 through 2008. These data will enable users to compare actual and apparent change for those years.⁷

By a ratio of more than two-to-one (59% versus 27%), Latinos disapprove of the way the Obama administration is handling deportations of unauthorized immigrants, according to a new national survey of Latino adults by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center.

Deportations have reached record levels under President Obama, rising to an annual average of nearly 400,000¹ since 2009, about 30% higher than the annual average during the second term of the Bush administration and about double the annual average during George W. Bush’s first term.

Even as deportations have been rising, apprehensions of border crossers by the U.S. Border Patrol have declined by more than 70%—from 1.2 million in 2005 to 340,000 in 2011. This mirrors a sharp drop in the number of unauthorized immigrants entering the U.S. since the middle of the last decade (Passel and Cohn, 2010).

More than eight-in-ten (81%) of the nation’s estimated 11.2 million unauthorized immigrants are of Hispanic origin, according to Pew Hispanic Center estimates (Passel and Cohn, 2011). Hispanics accounted for an even larger share of deportees in 2010—97%. (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2011a).

Not all Latinos are aware that the Obama administration has stepped up deportations of unauthorized immigrants. In response to a question on the Pew Hispanic survey, a plurality (41%) of Latinos say that the Obama administration is deporting more unauthorized immigrants than the Bush administration. Slightly more than a third (36%) say the two administrations have deported about the same number of immigrants. And one-in-ten (10%) Latinos say the Obama administration has deported fewer unauthorized immigrants than the Bush administration.

Disapproval of Obama’s policy is most widespread among those who are aware that deportations have risen during his tenure. Among this group, more than three-quarters (77%) disapprove of the way his administration is handling the issue of deportations. Among those who are not aware that an increase has occurred, slightly more than half disapprove.

Awareness of the level of deportations is higher among foreign-born Hispanics than among native-born Hispanics—55% versus 25%. It is even higher among those who are most at risk of deportation. Seven-in-ten (71%) Hispanic immigrants who are not U.S. citizens and do not have a green card—a group that closely aligns with the unauthorized immigrant population²—say the Obama administration has deported more unauthorized immigrants than the Bush administration.

These findings are from a new national survey of 1,220 Hispanic adults ages 18 and older conducted by landline and cellular telephone, in English and Spanish, from November 9 through December 7, 2011. The margin of error for the full sample is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. For a full description of the survey methodology, see Appendix B.

Immigration Policy Priorities

In recent years, the debate over illegal immigration has often been posed as a choice between two competing priorities—increasing border security and enforcement or providing a path to citizenship to immigrants who are in the country illegally.

Latinos are nearly twice as likely as the general public (42% versus 24%) to say the priority should be a path to citizenship for immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally.

About as many Latinos as the general public (46% versus 43%) say equal priority should be given to enforcement and legalization. Just 10% of Latinos say priority should be given to better border security and enforcement, compared with 29% of the general public.

The 2012 Presidential Election and Latinos

The Pew Hispanic survey also reveals that, heading into the 2012 presidential campaign, Obama and the Democratic Party continue to enjoy strong support from Latino registered voters.

In a hypothetical match-up against former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Obama wins 68% to 23% among Latino registered voters. And in a match-up against Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Obama wins the Latino vote 69% to 23%.³ These results closely match the outcome of the 2008 presidential election, when Obama carried the Latino vote over Republican John McCain by 67% to 31% (Lopez, 2008).

Even among those who disapprove of the way Obama is handling the issue of deportations, a majority support his reelection over either of these two potential Republican challengers. Obama would carry this group by 57% to 34% against Romney and 61% to 31% against Perry.

The survey also shows that identification with the Democratic Party among Hispanic registered voters remains strong. Two-thirds (67%) of Hispanic registered voters say they identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, while 20% say the same about the Republican Party.

And when asked which party has more concern for Hispanics, 45% say it’s the Democratic Party, while 12% say it’s the Republican Party. The share that identifies the Republican Party as the better party for Hispanics is up six percentage points since 2010.

Obama’s Job Rating among Hispanics

Despite Obama’s strong showing among Latinos when compared with potential 2012 Republican rivals, he has suffered a decline in his overall approval rating as president. Today 49% of Latinos approve of the job he is doing, down from 58% in 2010. Among the general public, Obama’s approval trend has been more stable during the past year (Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 2011a). His current rating—46%—is still somewhat lower among the general public than among Latinos, but this gap has narrowed significantly in the past year.

Among Latinos who disapprove of the Obama administration’s deportation policy, just 36% approve of the president’s overall job performance while 54% disapprove.

Top Issues for Latinos

The survey finds that jobs, education and health care are the top issues for Hispanic registered voters as they think about the upcoming presidential election. Half identify jobs as extremely important to them personally, followed closely by education (49%) and health care (45%). These top three reflect the same three issues Hispanic registered voters identified as most important in 2010 (Lopez, 2010) and in 2008 (Lopez and Minushkin, 2008).

One-third (33%) of Latino registered voters say immigration is extremely important to them personally, statistically unchanged since 2010. About a third also describes taxes and the federal budget deficit as extremely important issues.

Among the report’s other findings:

• More than half (56%) of all Latinos say they are dissatisfied with the direction of the country today, while 38% say they are satisfied. Among the general public, 78% are dissatisfied with the nation’s direction while 17% are satisfied (Pew Research Center, 2011).

Deportations

• One-quarter (24%) of all Latinos say they know someone who has been deported or detained by the federal government in the past year.
• The share of convicted criminal deportations among all deportations reached a high of 44% in 2010, up from 29% in 2008.

Immigration Policy

• Nine-in-ten (91%) Latinos support the DREAM Act, legislation that would permit young adults who were brought to the U.S. illegally when they were children to become legal residents if they go to college or serve in the military for two years.
• More than eight-in-ten (84%) Latinos say unauthorized immigrants should be eligible for in-state tuition at public colleges if they went to a high school in their state and were accepted at a public college.

The 2012 Election

• More than half (56%) of Hispanic registered voters say they have given little or no thought to the candidates who may be running for president in 2012.
• When asked about their opinion of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, more than half (54%) of Latino registered voters say they have never heard of him, can’t rate him or responded “don’t know.” Rubio, who is of Cuban ancestry, has been mentioned as a possible Republican vice presidential running mate.
• Among Latino registered voters, 35% describe their political views as conservative, 32% describe them as moderate and 28% describe their political views as liberal.

Nearly two-thirds of the 10.2 million unauthorized adult immigrants in the United States have lived in this country for at least 10 years and nearly half are parents of minor children, according to new estimates by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center.

These estimates are based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s March 2010 Current Population Survey, augmented with the Center’s analysis of the demographic characteristics of the unauthorized immigrant population using a “residual estimation methodology”¹ that the Center has employed for many years.

The characteristics of this population have become a source of renewed interest in the wake of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s recent endorsement of a proposal to create a path for unauthorized immigrants to gain legal status if they have lived in the country for a long period of time, have children in the U.S., pay taxes and belong to a church. Several of Gingrich’s opponents for the Republican presidential nomination have criticized the proposal as a form of amnesty that would encourage more immigrants to come to the U.S. illegally.

The Pew Hispanic analysis finds that 35% of unauthorized adult immigrants have resided in the U.S. for 15 years or more; 28% for 10 to 14 years; 22% for 5 to 9 years; and 15% for less than five years.

The share that has been in the country at least 15 years has more than doubled since 2000, when about one-in-six (16%) unauthorized adult immigrants had lived here for that duration. By the same token, the share of unauthorized adult immigrants who have lived in the country for less than five years has fallen by half during this period—from 32% in 2000 to 15% in 2010.

The rising share of unauthorized immigrants who have been in the U.S. for a long duration reflects the fact that the sharpest growth in this population occurred during the late 1990s and early 2000s—and that the inflow has slowed down significantly in recent years, as the U.S. economy has sputtered and border enforcement has tightened. It also reflects the fact that relatively few long-duration unauthorized immigrants have returned to their countries of origin.

Family Status

The Pew Hispanic analysis also finds that nearly half (46%) of unauthorized adult immigrants today—about 4.7 million people—are parents of minor children. By contrast, just 38% of legal immigrant adults and 29% of U.S.-born adults are parents of minor children.

Much of this disparity results from the fact that unauthorized immigrants are younger than other groups of adults in the U.S. and more likely to be in their child-bearing and child-rearing years. The median age of unauthorized immigrant adults is 36.2 years old, which is about a decade younger than the median age of legal immigrant adults (46.1) and U.S. native adults (46.5). The age variation accounts for 78% of the difference in the shares of unauthorized immigrants and U.S. natives who are parents.²

Unauthorized immigrants make up 28% of the country’s foreign-born population and 3.7% of the overall population. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that a total of 11.2 million unauthorized immigrants, including people younger than 18, live in the U.S. This figure is lower than the 2007 peak of 12 million such immigrants. The recent decrease followed a two-decade period of growth, including a rise in the population from 8.4 million in 2000.

The decrease has occurred in part because of reduced flows into the U.S. among Mexicans, who constitute 58%—or 6.5 million—of the unauthorized immigrant population. About 150,000 unauthorized immigrants from Mexico came annually to the U.S. from March 2007 to March 2009, down 70% from the annual rates during the first half of the decade. As for outflow, the number of Mexican migrants who voluntarily return to Mexico has stayed somewhat steady, but removals (deportations) are on the rise. There were almost 390,000 removals (deportations) in fiscal 2010, or more than twice as many as in 2000, according to the Department of Homeland Security. About 73% of deportees in 2010 originally came from Mexico.

About 5 million unauthorized adult immigrants—49%—are in families with minor children.³ Along with the approximately 1 million unauthorized immigrants who are children, an additional 4.5 million people younger than 18 were born in the U.S. to at least one unauthorized immigrant parent. While the population of unauthorized immigrant children has decreased from a peak of 1.6 million in 2005, the number of U.S.-born children with at least one unauthorized immigrant parent has more than doubled since 2000.

Overall, at least 9 million people are in “mixed-status” families that include at least one unauthorized adult and at least one U.S.-born child. This makes up 54% of the 16.6 million people in families with at least one unauthorized immigrant. There are 400,000 unauthorized immigrant children in such families who have U.S.-born siblings.

Attendance at Religious Services

Additional details about the characteristics of Hispanic unauthorized immigrants—who comprise 81% of the unauthorized immigrant population—are available from the Pew Hispanic Center’s 2010 National Survey of Latinos, a nationwide survey of more than 1,300 Hispanic adults conducted from August 17 through September 19, 2010. The survey includes responses from Hispanic adults who say they are neither U.S. citizens nor legal residents—a group which closely aligns with the unauthorized immigrant population.⁴

According to the 2010 NSL, nearly four-in-ten (39%) Hispanic adults who are not citizens or legal permanent residents say they attend religious services weekly. An additional 23% say they attend services at least once or twice a month. And one-in-five (19%) say they attend services seldom or never.

Latinos who are not citizens or legal residents are not much different in how frequently they attend religious services when compared with other Latinos or the general U.S. population. Among foreign-born Latinos who are naturalized citizens or legal permanent residents, 45% attend religious services on at least a weekly basis. Among U.S.-born Latinos, 37% attend on at least a weekly basis. And among the general U.S. population, 38% attend religious services on at least a weekly basis.

Public Opinion on Immigration Policy

The 2010 NSL also explored public opinion among Latinos regarding immigration policy (Lopez, Morin and Taylor, 2010). According to the survey, Latinos who are not citizens or legal residents are supportive of a path to citizenship—91% favor providing a way for unauthorized immigrants to gain citizenship if they pay fines, have jobs and pass background checks. Among all Latinos, 86% support a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants, with these conditions. And among all Americans, 72% support a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants with these conditions (Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 2011).

The 2010 NSL also found that among Latino adults who are not citizens or legal residents, 88% disapprove of workplace raids, 74% believe that the federal government should enforce the nation’s immigration laws rather than local police, 71% disapprove of building more fences on the nation’s borders, and nearly all (95%) disapprove of laws like Arizona’s SB 1070 (Lopez, Morin and Taylor, 2010).

Births have surpassed immigration as the main driver of the dynamic growth in the U.S. Hispanic population. This new trend is especially evident among the largest of all Hispanic groups-Mexican-Americans¹, according to a new analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center.

In the decade from 2000 to 2010, the Mexican-American population grew by 7.2 million as a result of births and 4.2 million as a result of new immigrant arrivals. This is a change from the previous two decades when the number of new immigrants either matched or exceeded the number of births.

The current surge in births among Mexican-Americans is largely attributable to the immigration wave that has brought more than 10 million immigrants to the United States from Mexico since 1970. Between 2006 and 2010 alone, more than half (53%) of all Mexican-American births were to Mexican immigrant parents. As a group, these immigrants are more likely than U.S.-born Americans to be in their prime child-bearing years. They also have much higher fertility.

Meanwhile, the number of new immigrant arrivals from Mexico has fallen off steeply in recent years. According to a Pew Hispanic Center analysis of Mexican government data, the number of Mexicans annually leaving Mexico for the U.S. declined from more than one million in 2006 to 404,000 in 2010-a 60% reduction.² This is likely a result of recent developments in both the U.S. and Mexico. On the U.S. side, declining job opportunities and increased border enforcement (Passel and Cohn, 2009) may have made the U.S. less attractive to potential Mexican immigrants. And in Mexico, recent strong economic growth may have reduced the “push” factors that often lead Mexicans to emigrate to the U.S.

As a result, there were fewer new immigrant arrivals to the U.S. from Mexico in the 2000s (4.2 million) than in the 1990s (4.7 million). However, the Mexican-American population continued to grow rapidly, with births accounting for 63% of the 11.2 million increase from 2000 to 2010.³

At 31.8 million in 2010, Mexican-Americans comprise 63% of the U.S. Hispanic population and 10% of the total U.S. population (Ennis, Ríos-Vargas and Albert, 2011). According to Pew Hispanic Center tabulations from the March 2010 U.S. Current Population Survey, 39% of Mexican-Americans-or 12.4 million-are immigrants.⁴ With the exception of Russia, no other country in the world has as many immigrants from all countries as the U.S. has from Mexico alone.⁵ Nor does any country in the world have as many citizens living abroad as does Mexico. According to the World Bank, more than 10% of Mexico’s native-born population lives elsewhere, with the vast majority (97%) of these expatriates living in the United States.

Overall, the Hispanic population of the United States grew from 35.3 million in 2000 to 50.5 million in 2010, accounting for more than half of the nation’s overall population growth during that decade (Passel, Cohn and Lopez, 2011). Some 58% of this Hispanic population increase came from births rather than the arrival of new immigrants. However, for many non-Mexican-origin Hispanic groups in the U.S., births accounted for less than half of their population growth in the past decade. For example, from 2000 to 2010, births accounted for just 38% of the growth of the Cuban-American population and just 39% of the growth of the population of U.S. Hispanics of Central or South American origin.

Hispanics now comprise 16.3% of the total U.S. population. This share is projected to rise to 29% by the middle of this century, with the bulk of the future increase driven by births, many the descendents of today’s immigration wave, rather than the arrival of new immigrants. (Passel and Cohn, 2008).

The 2010 Census counted 50.5 million Hispanics in the United States, making up 16.3% of the total population. The nation’s Latino population, which was 35.3 million in 2000, grew 43% over the decade. The Hispanic population also accounted for most of the nation’s growth—56%—from 2000 to 2010.

Among children ages 17 and younger, there were 17.1 million Latinos, or 23.1% of this age group, according to an analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center. The number of Latino children grew 39% over the decade. In 2000, there were 12.3 million Hispanic children, who were 17.1% of the population under age 18.

There were 33.3 million Hispanics ages 18 and older in 2010, a 45% increase from 2000. Hispanics made up 14.2% of the adult population in 2010, compared with 11% and 23 million people in 2000.

Racial and ethnic minorities accounted for 91.7% of the nation’s growth over the decade; non-Hispanic whites accounted for the remaining 8.3%.

Hispanics, who can be of any race, are the nation’s largest minority group. Looking at the major groups of single-race non-Hispanics in 2010, 196.8 million (63.7%) were white; 37.7 million (12.2%) were black; and 14.5 million (4.7%) were Asian. There were 6 million non-Hispanics, or 1.9% of the U.S. population, who checked more than one race.

By race, more than half of Hispanics—53%, or 26.7 million people—identified themselves as white alone, an increase from 2000 when 47.9% did. The next largest group, 36.7% or 18.5 million Hispanics, identified themselves as “some other race,” a decline from 2000, when 42.2% did. An additional 6%, compared with 6.3% in 2000, checked multiple races.

Although the numerical growth of the Hispanic population since 2000—more than 15 million—surpassed the totals for the previous two decades, the growth rate of 43% was somewhat slower than previous decades. Growth rates topped 50% in the 1980s (53%) and 1990s (58%).

The count of the nation’s Hispanic population was slightly larger than expected. The 2010 Census count of Hispanics was 955,000 people and 1.9% larger than the Census Bureau’s latest population estimate for Hispanics. In some states, especially with small Hispanic populations, the gap was wider.

Geographically, most Hispanics still live in nine states that have large, long-standing Latino communities—Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, New Mexico, New Jersey, New York and Texas—but the share living in other states has been growing.

In 2010, 76% of Latinos lived in these nine states, compared with 81% in 2000 and 86% in 1990. (In 2000, 50% of Hispanics lived in California and Texas alone. In 2010, that share was 46.5 %.) Despite the pattern of dispersion, however, there are more Latinos living in Los Angeles County (4.7 million) than in any state except California and Texas.

As the accompanying charts show, the states with the largest Hispanic populations include eight with more than a million Hispanics, the largest of which is California, where 14 million Latinos were counted.

The dozen states where Hispanics are the largest share of the population include five where Latinos are more than one-in-four state residents—New Mexico, Texas, California, Arizona and Nevada.

The states with the largest percent growth in their Hispanic populations include nine where the Latino population more than doubled, including a swath in the southeast United States—Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee and South Carolina. The Hispanic population also more than doubled in Maryland and South Dakota.

In six states, growth in the Hispanic population accounted for all of those states’ population growth; if the Hispanic population had not grown, those states would not have grown. They included Illinois, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island. In Michigan, the state population declined over the decade but the Hispanic population grew.

Looking at the Latino population by region, the West and South are home to the most Hispanics, while growth has been most rapid in the South and Midwest. In 2010, 20.6 million Hispanics lived in the West, 18.2 million lived in the South, 7 million lived in the Northeast and 4.7 million lived in the Midwest.

Acknowledgments

Paul Taylor provided editorial guidance in the drafting of this report. Daniel Dockterman prepared the charts and tables and checked the text; Gabriel Velasco checked its charts and tables. Michael Keegan prepared the website graphics for this report. Molly Rohal was the copy editor for this report.

The specific data sources for this statistical profile are the 1% sample of the 2009 ACS Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) and the 5% sample of the 2000 Census IPUMS provided by the University of Minnesota.¹ The IPUMS assigns uniform codes, to the extent possible, to data collected by the decennial census and the ACS from 1850 to 2009. Due to differences in the way in which the IPUMS and Census Bureau adjust income data and assign poverty status, data provided in Tables 27 – 34 might differ from data on these variables that are provided by the Census Bureau. For more information about the IPUMS, including variable definition and sampling error, please visit http://usa.ipums.org/usa/design.shtml. To learn more about the sampling strategy and associated error of the 2000 Census or the 2009 American Community Survey, please refer to Chapter 8 of the U.S. Census Summary File 3: 2000 and U.S. Cenus Design Methodology, respectively.

Because persons living in group quarters were not included in the 2005 ACS, the data contained in this profile of foreign-born persons, tabulated from the 2009 ACS, are not comparable with the data included in the Pew Hispanic Center’s Foreign Born at Mid-Decade report.

For the purposes of this statistical portrait, the foreign born include those persons who identified as naturalized citizens or non-citizens. Persons born in Puerto Rico and other outlying territories of the U.S. are included in the native-born population.

As of March 2010, 11.2 million unauthorized immigrants were living in the United States, virtually unchanged from a year earlier, according to new estimates from the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center. This stability in 2010 follows a two-year decline from the peak of 12 million in 2007 to 11.1 million in 2009 that was the first significant reversal in a two-decade pattern of growth.

The number of unauthorized immigrants in the nation’s workforce, 8 million in March 2010, also did not differ from the Pew Hispanic Center estimate for 2009. As with the population total, the number of unauthorized immigrants in the labor force had decreased in 2009 from its peak of 8.4 million in 2007. They made up 5.2% of the labor force in 2010.

The number of children born to at least one unauthorized-immigrant parent in 2009 was 350,000 and they made up 8% of all U.S. births, essentially the same as a year earlier. An analysis of the year of entry of unauthorized immigrants who became parents in 2009 indicates that 61% arrived in the U.S. before 2004, 30% arrived from 2004 to 2007, and 9% arrived from 2008 to 2010.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, unauthorized immigrants made up 3.7% of the nation’s population and 5.2% of its labor force in March 2010. Births to unauthorized immigrant parents accounted for 8% of newborns from March 2009 to March 2010, according to the center’s estimates, which are based mainly on data from the government’s Current Population Survey.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, unauthorized immigrants made up 3.7% of the nation’s population and 5.2% of its labor force in March 2010. Births to unauthorized immigrant parents accounted for 8% of newborns from March 2009 to March 2010, according to the center’s estimates, which are based mainly on data from the government’s Current Population Survey.

The decline in the population of unauthorized immigrants from its peak in 2007 appears due mainly to a decrease in the number from Mexico, which went down to 6.5 million in 2010 from 7 million in 2007. Mexicans remain the largest group of unauthorized immigrants, accounting for 58% of the total.

The decline in the population of unauthorized immigrants since 2007 has been especially marked in some states that recently had attracted large numbers of unauthorized immigrants. The number has decreased in Colorado, Florida, New York and Virginia. The combined unauthorized immigrant population of three contiguous Mountain West states—Arizona, Nevada and Utah—also declined.

The number of unauthorized immigrants may have declined in other states as well, but this cannot be stated conclusively because the measured change was within the margin of error for these estimates.

In contrast to the national trend, the number of unauthorized immigrants has grown in some West South Central states. From 2007 to 2010, there was a statistically significant increase in the combined unauthorized immigrant population of Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. The change was not statistically significant for these states individually, but it was for the combined three states. Texas has the second largest number of unauthorized immigrants, trailing only California.

Despite the recent decline and leveling off, the number of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States has tripled since 1990, when it was 3.5 million. The size of this population grew by a third since 2000, when was 8.4 million.

The estimates are produced using a multistage method that subtracts the legal foreign-born population from the total adjusted foreign-born population, with the residual then used as the source of information about unauthorized immigrants. The source of these data is the U.S. Census Bureau’s March Current Population Surveys.

Because these estimates are derived from sample surveys, they are subject to uncertainty from sampling error, as well as other types of error. Each annual estimate of the unauthorized population is actually the middle point of a range of possible values that could be the true number. Additionally, the change from one year to the next has its own margin of error.

Because of the margin of error in these estimates, two numbers may look different but cannot be said definitively to be different. For example, there is no statistically significant difference between the estimate of the unauthorized population for 2009 (11.1 million) and the estimate for 2010 (11.2 million). Similarly, some state estimates for single years are based on small samples; especially in less populous states, two single years should not be compared.

These ranges represent 90% confidence intervals, meaning that there is a 90% probability that the range contains the true value.

Although the estimates presented here indicate trends in the size and composition of the unauthorized-immigrant population, they are not designed to answer the question of why these changes occurred. There are many possible factors. The deep recession that began in the U.S. economy in late 2007 officially ended in 2009, but recovery has been slow to take hold and unemployment remains high. Immigration flows have tended to decrease in previous periods of economic distress.

The period covered by this analysis also has been accompanied by changes in the level of immigration enforcement and in enforcement strategies, not only by the federal government but also at state and local levels. Immigration also is subject to pressure by demographic and economic conditions in sending countries. This analysis does not attempt to quantify the relative impact of these forces on levels of unauthorized immigration.

About this Report

This report estimates the size of the unauthorized immigrant population, as well as the unauthorized immigrant labor force for the nation and each state in March 2010. For the nation, it also describes this population by region or country of birth and arrival period. For some of these variables, the report provides annual trends from 2000 onward. Updating and expanding on an earlier report about U.S.-born children of unauthorized immigrants, the report provides estimates and trends for the status of children of unauthorized immigrants as well as information about their parents’ period of arrival and country of origin.

The Pew Hispanic Center estimates the unauthorized immigrant population using the “residual method,” a well-developed and widely accepted technique that is based on official government data. Under this methodology, a demographic estimate of the legal foreign-born population—naturalized citizens, legal permanent residents, temporary legal residents and refugees—is subtracted from the total foreign-born population. The remainder, or residual, is the source of population estimates and characteristics of unauthorized immigrants.

These Pew Hispanic Center estimates use data mainly from the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly survey of about 55,000 households conducted jointly by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau. It is best known as the source for monthly unemployment statistics. Each March, the CPS sample size and questionnaire are expanded to produce additional data on the foreign-born population and other topics. The Pew Hispanic Center estimates make adjustments to the government data to compensate for undercounting of some groups, and therefore its population totals differ somewhat from the ones the government uses. Estimates for any given year are based on a March reference date.

Because of small sample size in many states and potentially large sampling variability, some state estimates presented are based on multiyear averages. For the 34 states with fewer than 50 cases of unauthorized immigrant households in the 2010 sample survey, the estimates for that year are an average of 2009 and 2010. These states are Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, Wisconsin and Wyoming. Estimates for other states and for the District of Columbia are based solely on 2010 data.

All 2007 state estimates were derived by calculating the average share of the national unauthorized immigrant population for 2006-2008 that was held by each state, then applying that share to the 2007 national total.

For more detail, see the Methodology appendix.

A Note on Terminology

“Foreign born” refers to an individual who is not a U.S. citizen at birth or, in other words, who is born outside the U.S., Puerto Rico or other U.S. territories and whose parents are not U.S. citizens. The terms “foreign born” and “immigrant” are used interchangeably.

“U.S. born” refers to an individual who is a U.S. citizen at birth, including people born in the United States, Puerto Rico or other U.S. territories, as well as those born elsewhere to parents who are U.S. citizens.

The “legal immigrant” population is defined as people granted legal permanent residence; those granted asylum; people admitted as refugees; and people admitted under a set of specific authorized temporary statuses for longer-term residence and work. This group includes “naturalized citizens,” legal immigrants who have become U.S. citizens through naturalization; “legal permanent resident aliens,” who have been granted permission to stay indefinitely in the U.S. as permanent residents, asylees or refugees; and “legal temporary migrants,” who are allowed to live and, in some cases, work in the U.S. for specific periods of time (usually longer than one year).

“Unauthorized immigrants” are all foreign-born non-citizens residing in the country who are not “legal immigrants.” These definitions reflect standard and customary usage by the Department of Homeland Security and academic researchers. The vast majority of unauthorized immigrants entered the country without valid documents or arrived with valid visas but stayed past their visa expiration date or otherwise violated the terms of their admission. Some who entered as unauthorized immigrants or violated terms of admission have obtained work authorization by applying for adjustment to legal permanent status or by obtaining Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Data are very limited, but this “quasi-legal” group could account for as much as 10% of the unauthorized population. Many could also revert to unauthorized status.

“Children” are people under age 18 who are not married. “Adults” are ages 18 and older.

“Children of unauthorized immigrants” or “children of unauthorized immigrant parents” include both foreign-born and U.S.-born children who live with at least one unauthorized immigrant parent.

About the Authors

Jeffrey S. Passel is a senior demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center. He is a nationally known expert on immigration to the United States and on the demography of racial and ethnic groups. In 2005, Dr. Passel was made a fellow of the American Statistical Association, which cited his outstanding contributions to the measurement of population composition and change. He formerly served as principal research associate at the Urban Institute’s Labor, Human Services and Population Center. From 1987 to 1989, he was assistant chief for population estimates and projections in the Population Division of the U.S. Census Bureau.

D’Vera Cohn is a senior writer at the Pew Research Center. From 1985 to 2006, she was a reporter at The Washington Post, where she wrote chiefly about demographic trends and immigration. She was the newspaper’s lead reporter for the 2000 Census.

Acknowledgments

Paul Taylor provided editorial guidance in the drafting of this report. Daniel Dockterman and Gabriel Velasco prepared the charts and tables for this report; Daniel Dockterman checked its charts, tables and maps. Michael Keegan prepared the maps for this report. Marcia Kramer served as copy editor.

In the year following the official end of the Great Recession in June 2009,¹ foreign-born workers gained 656,000 jobs while native-born workers lost 1.2 million, according to a new analysis of U.S. Census Bureau and Department of Labor data by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center.²

As a result, the unemployment rate for immigrant workers fell 0.6 percentage points during this period (from 9.3% to 8.7%), while for native-born workers it rose 0.5 percentage points (from 9.2% to 9.7%).³

The 2009-2010 recovery for immigrants, who make up 15.7% of the labor force, is also reflected in two other key labor market indicators. A greater share of their working-age population (ages 16 and older) is active in the labor market, evidenced by an increase in the labor force participation rate from 68.0% in the second quarter of 2009 to 68.2% in the second quarter of 2010. Likewise, a greater share is employed, with the employment rate up from 61.7% to 62.3%.

These gains occurred at a time when native-born workers sustained ongoing losses. The native born engaged less in the labor market (labor force participation rate fell from 65.3% in the second quarter of 2009 to 64.5% in the second quarter of 2010), and a smaller share was employed (58.3% versus 59.3%).

But the jobs recovery for immigrants is far from complete. The 656,000 jobs immigrants gained in the first year of the recovery are not nearly sufficient to make up for the 1.1 million jobs they lost from the second quarter of 2008 to the second quarter of 2009. Over the two-year period from 2008 to 2010, second quarter to second quarter, foreign-born workers have lost 400,000 jobs and native-born workers have lost 5.7 million jobs.⁴ The unemployment rate for immigrants is still more than double the rate prior to the recession, when it stood at 4.0% in the second quarter of 2007.

Also, even as immigrants have managed to gain jobs in the recovery, they have experienced a sharp decline in earnings. From 2009 to 2010, the median weekly earnings of foreign-born workers decreased 4.5%, compared with a loss of less than one percent for native-born workers. Latino immigrants experienced the largest drop in wages of all.⁵ It might be that in the search for jobs in the recovery, immigrants were more accepting of lower wages and reduced hours because many, especially unauthorized immigrants, are not eligible for unemployment benefits.⁶

The reasons that only foreign-born workers have gained jobs in the recovery are not entirely clear. One factor might be greater flexibility on the part of immigrants. Research suggests that immigrants are more mobile than native-born workers, moving more fluidly across regions, industries and occupations (Orrenius and Zavodny, 2009, Borjas, 2001). But the flip side of flexibility can be instability. Unpublished research by the Pew Hispanic Center finds that immigrants are more likely to exit from and enter into employment on a month-to-month basis.

Another reason that immigrants are displaying greater success at the start of the recovery might simply be that their employment patterns are more volatile over the business cycle. This means that immigrants register sharper losses in the early stages of recessions but rebound quicker in the recovery. That pattern played out in the 2001 recession and recovery,⁷ and it may be repeating now—there is evidence that immigrants took a harder hit than native-born workers during the Great Recession.⁸ Whether or not the initial lead in jobs recovery taken by immigrants sustains itself remains to be seen, given the tenuous nature of the overall rebound from the Great Recession.

Demographic changes, both short term and long term, might also be a factor in determining employment trends in the recovery. The ebb and flow of immigration is sensitive to the business cycle, with economic expansions tending to boost inflows. A September 2010 report from the Pew Hispanic Center (Passel and Cohn, 2010) estimated that, coincidental with the economic downturn, the number of unauthorized immigrants in the U.S. labor force fell from 8.4 million in March 2007 to 7.8 million in March 2009.⁹ It appears that the economic recovery, young as it is, is attracting immigrant workers back into the U.S.

Longer-term demographic trends might also be reasserting themselves during the recovery. The immigrant share of the U.S. labor force has been on the rise for several decades, especially since 1990. Some 15.7% of the labor force today is foreign born, up from 9.7% in 1995.¹⁰ Because the foreign-born labor force has been growing faster than the native-born labor force, immigrant employment has tended to rise faster than native-born employment. The pattern during the current recovery is consistent with the long-run demographic trend—from the second quarter of 2009 to the second quarter of 2010, the number of immigrants in the labor force increased by 566,000, while the native-born labor force decreased by 633,000.

This report analyzes labor market outcomes in recent years not just by nativity, but also for racial and ethnic groups, including Hispanics, whites, blacks and Asians.¹¹ The primary focus is on the period from the second quarter of 2008 to the second quarter of 2009, when most of the job losses during the Great Recession occurred, and the period from the second quarter of 2009 to the second quarter of 2010, the first year of recovery from the recession. Previous reports by the Center have analyzed outcomes for Latinos and immigrants at the beginning of the Great Recession and the period leading up to the recession (Kochhar, June 2008, December 2008, 2009).

Labor markets trends from the second quarter of 2009 to the second quarter of 2010 are partly affected by the hiring of Census 2010 temporary workers. Employment of those workers peaked in May 2010 and decreased sharply thereafter. Because the U.S. government hires only U.S. citizens, the hiring of Census workers would have tilted to the native born—only 43% of immigrants in the labor force in the second quarter of 2010 were U.S. citizens. Absent Census 2010 hiring, the difference between the jobs gained by immigrants and the jobs lost by the native born would most likely have been greater.

The data for this report are derived from the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly survey of about 55,000 households conducted jointly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and the Census Bureau. Data from three monthly surveys were combined to create larger sample sizes and to conduct the analysis on a quarterly basis. The universe for the analysis is the civilian, non-institutional population ages 16 and older.

Estimates in this report are adjusted for annual, technical revisions to the CPS and will not match estimates published by the BLS (see Appendix A for details). Employment estimates in this report, from the survey of households, will also not match the payroll estimates of employment published by the BLS from its surveys of employers. Payroll data cannot be used in this report because, except for gender, they do not record the demographic characteristics of workers.

Because immigration status is not recorded in the source data, this report is not able to identify immigrants in the labor force by whether or not they are unauthorized. However, other reports from the Pew Hispanic Center have reported on the labor force status of unauthorized immigrants. As of March 2009, there were 7.8 million unauthorized immigrants in the labor force, accounting for about one-third of the foreign-born labor force (Passel and Cohn, 2010). Also, the report does not address the question of whether native-born workers would fare differently in the job market absent the growth in the foreign-born labor force. This issue is the subject of research by many economists, including Ottaviano and Peri (2008), Card (2005) and Borjas (2003).

Labor market outcomes are tracked using a variety of indicators. Economic trends are reflected in levels of employment and unemployment, and in the rates of employment and unemployment. The extent to which persons ages 16 and older participate in the labor force, either working or seeking work, is also influenced by economic conditions—people are drawn into the labor market during expansions, and they withdraw during recessions. Changes in these indicators are the key to understanding the impact of the business cycle on different racial and ethnic groups.

Other main findings of this report include:

Foreign born and native born

• The foreign-born working-age population (ages 16 and older) in the U.S. increased by 709,000 from the second quarter of 2009 to the second quarter of 2010. That marks a reversal from the preceding year, when the foreign-born working-age population shrank by 95,000.

Hispanics

• Employment among Hispanics increased by 392,000 from the second quarter of 2009 to the second quarter of 2010. All of the gains accrued to foreign-born Hispanics—their employment increased by 435,000.
• The unemployment rate for foreign-born Hispanics decreased from 11.0% in the second quarter of 2009 to 10.1% in the second quarter of 2010. At the same time, the unemployment rate for native-born Hispanics increased from 12.9% to 14.0%.
• Among non-Hispanics, foreign-born workers gained 220,000 jobs but native-born workers lost 1.2 million jobs from the second quarter of 2009 to the second quarter of 2010. The unemployment rate for foreign-born non-Hispanics fell from 7.6% to 7.4%; for native-born non-Hispanics, it increased from 8.9% to 9.3%.

Whites

• Non-Hispanic whites lost 986,000 jobs from the second quarter of 2009 to the second quarter of 2010, and their unemployment rate increased from 7.7% to 8.0%. The losses were experienced only by native-born whites; immigrants gained 214,000 jobs and reduced their unemployment rate from 7.0% to 6.3%.

Blacks

• Employment for native-born blacks decreased by 142,000 in the first year of the recovery and increased by 81,000 for foreign-born blacks. The unemployment rate for native-born blacks increased from 15.4% to 16.3%; for immigrant blacks, it decreased from 11.4% to 10.7%.

Asians

• Asians had a different experience—employment of the native born increased by 208,000 from the second quarter of 2009 to the second quarter of 2010, and employment of immigrants decreased by 102,000 . The unemployment rate for native-born Asians fell from 9.9% to 8.7%; for foreign-born Asians, it increased from 6.7% to 7.0%.

Industries

• The construction sector was a leading source of job losses in the recession, and it remains a leading source of unemployment for native-born workers during the recovery. Of the 1.2 million jobs lost by native-born workers from the second quarter of 2009 to the second quarter of 2010, 645,000 jobs were lost in construction alone.
• Foreign-born Hispanics began to reverse their job losses in construction. After losing 335,000 jobs from the second quarter of 2008 to the second quarter of 2009, immigrant Hispanics gained 98,000 construction jobs from the second quarter of 2009 to the second quarter of 2010.
• The eating, drinking and lodging services sector lost 501,000 jobs in the first year of the recovery, almost as many as construction. Job gains were strongest in hospitals and other health services and public administration.

Wages

• Median weekly earnings of both native-born and foreign-born workers inched up 1.0% from 2008 to 2009—from $651 to $657 for the native born and from $544 to $550 for immigrants, in 2010 prices.
• In the recovery from 2009 to 2010, median weekly wages of foreign-born workers fell to $525, a loss of 4.5%. The wages of native-born workers were virtually unchanged, standing at $653 in the second quarter of 2010.
• Hispanic immigrants have experienced the greatest loss in wages. Their median weekly wage decreased 1.3% from 2008 to 2009 and then an additional 5.8% from 2009 to 2010.

The next section of this report describes employment and unemployment trends during the last year of the Great Recession, from the second quarter of 2008 to the second quarter of 2009, and the first year of the economic recovery, from the second quarter of 2009 to the second quarter of 2010. Trends in employment are discussed in the aggregate, by nativity, by racial and ethnic group, and by industry. The subsequent section analyzes recent trends in the working-age population and labor force, principal demographic forces that determine labor supply. The concluding section reports on changes in the earnings of workers in the recession and the recovery. Methodological details and supplementary data tables are presented in the appendices.