Employers—especially construction employers—will be interested in new data the U.S Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics published Thursday on the role of foreign-born persons in the U.S. workforce (people currently working in the United States, who were born outside the U.S. and neither parent was a U.S. citizen).
These workers include both legal and undocumented immigrants. They accounted for almost 60% of the growth in the U.S. labor force last year. Foreign-born men continue to participate in the labor force at a considerably higher rate (77.4%) than their native-born counterparts (66.0%). Foreign-born men are also far more likely to work in construction, maintenance, and natural resource extraction occupations than native-born men (22.6% versus 14.4%).