Wages Did Not Rise in Arizona After SB1070

Alex NowrastehNational conservatives have latched onto the idea that cutting immigration will increase wagesdespiteallof theevidenceto thecontrary. One of the pieces of evidence they cite most is a  2016article in theWall Street Journalthat states that wages for construction and farm occupations in Arizona went up by 10 percent and 15 percent, respectively, in the 4  years after Arizona passed its immigration enforcement lawSB1070 in 2010. BothOren Cass andChristopher Caldwell use this data point.The only problem is those claims about wages are not true. Wages did not rise in Arizona after the passage of SB1070. This blog post uses data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics ’Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) and different methods to investigate whether wages for construction and farm workers rose in Arizona after the passage of SB1070. In every instance, wages did not rise in Arizona after that state passed immigration enforcement laws in 2007 and 2010. Just as economictheory would predict, there was no absolute rise in wages after Arizona cracked down on illegal immigration.Farm WagesThe mean nominal wage for all farm workers (occupational code 45 –0000) in the OES rose only 4.7 percent in nominal terms, from $9.52 an hour in 2010 to $9.97 an hour in 2014. In real terms, using the personal consumption expenditures index (PCE) with a base year of 2012, wages for all farming jobs in Arizona fell over that time from $9.85 to $9.67 an hour – an almost 2 percent d...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs