(Yet another) interesting study out this morning from the Brookings Institution. This one's about immigration and the labor market.
While a common thread in discussions of immigration is that most immigrants are low-skill workers in low-wage jobs, researchers at the Washington thinktank found that, in many places, that's simply not the case - at least the "low-skill" part.
They combed Census data to find out what share of foreign-born residents in the nation's 100biggest metro areas have at least a bachelor's degree, and what share lack even a high school diploma. What they found was striking, particularly in St. Louis.
While we have relatively few immigrants - 4 percent of the region's population, which puts St. Louis in the bottom fifth of metro areas nationwide - those who are here are unusually likely to be well-educated. There are more than three times as many "high-skill" (i.e. degree holding) immigrants in the St. Louis metro area as there are low-skill. Only Pittsburgh and Dayton have a higher ratio.
To people familiar with immigration in St. Louis, this may not come as a big surprise.
Our universities and health care and high-tech sectors have been magnets for well-educated newcomers, particularly from Asia. And we haven't seen the waves of poorer migrants from Mexico and Central America seeking jobs in construction and restaurants. We've also received a lot of refugees - from Vietnam and Bosnia, and, more recently, various countries in Africa and Central Asia - who may have more education than people moving simply to escape poverty back home. But St. Louis is not a big immigrant gateway.
In those places - regions like Phoenix and Los Angeles - the skills picture is different. But even there, Brookings notes, the ratio of high-skilled immigrants is growing. Nationwide, there are more immigrants with a college degree than with no high school diploma. And yet, the study also found, many educated immigrants are "over-qualified" for their jobs. People who were lawyers in their home country working as paralegals. Engineers who now drive a cab.
The challenge for places like St. Louis, Brookings said, is to help those educated workers make the most of their education here. Maybe that means programs to learn English fluently, or to add the relatively few additional skills needed to translate experience in their home country into valuable expertise here.
We have lots of success stories of immigrants building new companies here. As Brookings' study points out, we have the potential for many more.
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