Immigrants Employed In Most Dangerous Jobs
Occupational Safety and Health Daily: November 20, 2009
Immigrants Disproportionally Represented
Immigrant Workers: Immigrants Disproportionately Employed In Most Dangerous Jobs, Report Finds
The jobs and industries in which immigrants tend to be employed are more dangerous than those of workers born in the United States, new research shows.
Taken as a group, immigrants in the U.S. workforce suffer 148.74 on-the-job injuries per 10,000 workers, compared with 140.55 for native-born workers, according to the study, "Do Immigrants Work in Riskier Jobs?"
The study was written by Pia Orrenius, a senior economist and research officer with the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and Madeline Zavodny, chair of the Department of Economics at Agnes Scott College. The study was published in the August issue of the Population Association of America's journal Demography.
The study also found a death rate of 6.5 per 10,000 workers for immigrants, versus 4.71 for natives.
For 20 million workers -- the approximate number of immigrants working in the U.S. in 2005 -- that rate implies 358 more deaths than in the native-born population, the authors said. Foreign-born workers make up 15 percent of the U.S. work force but 18 percent of on-the-job deaths, according to the report.
If immigrants actually experience higher death rates within the same industry sectors and jobs as natives, moreover, "all of our results are underestimates," wrote Orrenius and Zavodny.
The report "confirms what people commonly believe -- that immigrants work in more dangerous jobs," Zavodny told BNA Nov. 19. "What motivated the research was that previous studies from the 1980s didn't find that. That was shocking to us."
The authors defined "immigrants" as all those born outside the United States, regardless of their visa or citizenship status, who were not U.S. citizens at birth.
Immigrants may hold riskier jobs than native-born Americans because of a lower awareness of workplace hazards or a different perception of the hazards, Orrenius and Zavodny wrote.
Immigrants may also have lower levels of education, less ability in English, fewer work alternatives because of their immigration status, and a greater willingness to accept worse working conditions for higher wages, the authors said.
Another factor is the "healthy immigrant effect," according to which "immigrants tend to be healthier upon arrival than natives" and thus more likely to take physically strenuous jobs in sectors such as construction, meatpacking, and agriculture, according to Orrenius and Zavodny.
Homicide is the leading cause of workplace death among immigrants, Orrenius and Zavodny wrote. Over 3,000 foreign-born workers were murdered at work between 1992 and 2005, according to the report.
Other studies also have found a higher fatality rate among immigrant workers. A study in the June-July issue of Accident Analysis & Prevention found that Hispanic workers born outside of the United States experienced significantly higher rates of fatal falls in construction. A June 2008 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found a 370 percent increase from 1992-2006 in Hispanic worker deaths by falls across all industries.
The Orrenius and Zavodny study also found that women and older workers tend to work in safer industries and occupations than men and younger workers. Blacks work in jobs with higher injury rates but lower industry and occupation fatality rates compared to whites, the study found.
Orrenius and Zavodny's report combined data from the U.S. Census Bureau's 2003-2005 American Community Survey with data from the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics.
