October 15, 2014. A story in Vox stresses the role of immigrant entrepreneurship, citing FPI’s work on the subject. Economic research shows repeatedly that, overall, immigrants don’t displace U.S.-born workers. How can this be? One part of the answer is that immigrants are not just workers, they are also entrepreneurs, so they create jobs for themselves and also for others. (Another part of the story, which is not covered in this piece, is that immigrants also expand consumer demand, so at the same time as more workers enter a local labor market there is also an increase in the demand for goods and services.) In other words, immigrants are not just adding workers to a local economy, they’re expanding all parts of the economy – workforce, employers, consumption, and for that matter investment, too.
Here is FPI in the Vox story:
Over the last two decades, immigrant owned businesses have made up 30 percent of the growth in the small business economy, a significant chunk given that immigrants only account for 13 percent of the US population. Their businesses also performed better than your average American. Employees within these small companies earned over $55,000 a year over the median earned income of $41,000 a year, according to the Fiscal Policy Institute’s report.