The Effects of Increasing Immigration Enforcement on the Labor Supply of High-Skilled Native Women

Chloe East, University of Colorado Denver
Andrea Velasquez , University of Colorado Denver

We examine the spillover effects of enforcement policies on the labor supply of high-skilled citizen women by exploiting the staggered rollout of Secure Communities (SC), a national immigration enforcement policy. We estimate a difference-in-difference model combining data on the timing and location of adoption of SC, with data from the American Community Survey over 2005-2014. We find that exposure to SC reduced the labor supply of college-educated citizen women, particularly women with young children. Evidence suggests changes in price of household services drive these results: 1) SC reduces the number of low-skilled non-citizen workers in the personal services industry, and increases wages of workers in this industry; and, 2) there are no effects for high-skilled citizen men or women without children, who are both less likely to outsource these services. This is the first evidence that restrictions on immigration have important unintended consequences on the labor supply of high-skilled women.

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 Presented in Session 251. Population Structure and the Labor Market