Are There Really Jobs Americans Won't Do? NO.

Are there really jobs that Americans won’t do? Many people argue that foreign born legal and illegal immigrants do the jobs Americans don't want to do. This study analyzed immigrant and native employment across 472 civilian occupations and found the answer was a resounding NO.

Many jobs often thought to be overwhelmingly done by foreign-born immigrants are in fact still done by majority native-born Americans:

-Maids and housekeepers: 51 percent native-born
-Taxi drivers and chauffeurs: 58 percent native-born
-Butchers and meat processors: 63 percent native-born
-Grounds maintenance workers: 64 percent native-born
-Construction laborers: 66 percent native-born
-Porters, bellhops, and concierges: 72 percent native-born
-Janitors: 73 percent native-born

High-immigrant occupations are primarily, but not exclusively, lower-wage jobs that require relatively little formal education.

Not all high-immigrant occupations are lower skilled. For example, 36 percent of software engineers are immigrants as are 27 percent of physicians.

Illegal immigrants work mostly in construction, cleaning, maintenance, food service, garment manufacturing, and agricultural occupations.

Although illegal immigrants comprise a large share of workers in agriculture, farm workers are only a tiny share of the total labor force. Just 5 percent of all illegal immigrants work in agriculture.

Native-born Americans tend to have double the levels of unemployment in high-immigrant occupations, confirming that legal and illegal immigrants take jobs away from native-born Americans.