Charts

Explore state- and county-level economic vitality in this Hamilton Project interactive feature.

Explore state-level variation in child exposure to food insecurity over the past decade.

Immigration during the second half of the 19th century lifted the foreign-born share of the population to 14 percent. Starting in the 1910s, however, immigration to the United States fell precipitously, and the foreign-born share of the population reached a historic low of 4.7 percent in 1970. The foreign-born fraction of the population rose steadily from 1970 to its 2017 level of 13.7 percent.

Though the foreign-born fraction has risen to its late-19th-century levels, the net migration rate is just half the level that prevailed around 1900. With declining native-born population growth in recent years, even a diminished level of net migration has been enough to raise the foreign-born fraction. In addition, recent growth in the number of prime-age children of immigrants has continued at more than 3 percent, supporting overall U.S. population growth. 

As of 2014 many in the foreign-born population had achieved U.S. citizenship (43.6 percent), while others had legal permanent resident status (26.9 percent), and still others were temporary residents with authorization to live in the country (4.0 percent). The remaining 25.5 percent of foreign-born residents are estimated to be unauthorized immigrants.

The countries of origin of immigrants to the United States have changed dramatically over the past century. In the early 20th century the overwhelming majority of migrants entering the United States came from Europe. Today, the makeup of U.S. immigrants is much different: nearly 60 percent of the foreign-born emigrated either from Mexico (which accounted for only 1.6 percent of the foreign-born in 1910) or Asian countries (which accounted for only 1.4 percent in 1910).

The educational attainment of immigrants is much more variable than that of native-born individuals: there are more immigrants with less than a high school degree, but also more immigrants with a master’s degree or doctorate (relative to children of native-born parents). This reflects the diversity of background that characterizes immigrants.

Immigrant workers are 39 percent less likely to work in office and administrative support positions and 31 percent less likely to work in management, while being 113 percent more likely to work in construction. However, these gaps tend to diminish across generations. There are almost no appreciable differences in occupations between the children of immigrants and children of natives.

In 2017 foreign-born prime-age (25–54) men worked at a rate 3.4 percentage points higher than native-born prime-age men, while foreign-born prime-age women worked at a rate 11.4 percentage points lower than native-born prime-age women. For undocumented immigrants, this divergence between male and female employment is even more pronounced.

There is broad agreement among researchers and analysts that immigration raises total economic output. By increasing the number of workers in the labor force, immigrants enhance the productive capacity of the U.S. economy.

The consensus of the empirical literature is that low-skilled immigration does not depress wages for low-skilled natives to any substantial extent.

Immigrants are more likely to possess college and advanced degrees, and more likely to work in STEM fields. This in turn leads to disproportionate immigrant contributions to innovation.

With its complicated system of taxes and transfers, the United States is affected in a variety of different ways by the arrival of immigrants. This chart provides estimates of immigrants’ fiscal impacts (including the fiscal impacts of their descendants), shown separately by level of educational attainment.

Immigrants to the United States are considerably less likely than natives to commit crimes or to be incarcerated. Recent immigrants are much less likely to be institutionalized (a proxy for incarceration that also includes those in health-care institutions like mental institutions, hospitals, and drug treatment centers) at every age. In addition, 30- to 36-year-old immigrants are less likely to have been recently arrested, incarcerated, charged, or convicted of a crime when compared to natives

This interactive map describes the prevalence of chronic absence, the share of students missing 15 or more days of school, during the 2015-16 school year.  The interactive allows anyone to explore rates of chronic absence at the school, district, state, and national levels by school and student characteristics.

This interactive feature allows users to see the distribution of annual earn­ings across the United States for a given occupation and age group, adjust­ing for cost of living and taxes. Users can compare wages by metropolitan and nonmetropolitan area, or by state.

A number of sectors—most notably retail, finance, and utilities—show considerable increases in concentration. Manufacturing shows less growth, but industries within manufacturing tend to be highly concentrated. Even the service sector, which has a low average level of concentration, has seen considerable growth over the past three decades (47 percent).

In industries such as “search engines,” “wireless carriers,” and “delivery services,” there are clear cost savings from large scale. High fixed costs—the infrastructure and technological expertise necessary to maintain a quality service—can be spread across many customers. Consequently, the respective top two firms in each market command 87 percent of the search engine market, 69 percent of the wireless carriers market, and 76 percent of the delivery services market.

From 1985 to 2014, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) as a share of publicly traded companies have increased from just 0.06 percent to 0.24 percent annually: relatively few firms merge in any given year, but the share has increased considerably. However, this increase was not matched by a similar rise in the value of M&As as a share of market capitalization.

If two firms in a market are owned by the same people, those firms likely have less motivation to compete vigorously than would two firms owned by different people. Accounting for common ownership significantly increases measured market concentration, and this effect has grown over time.

After a strong surge in the 1990s, net investment has fallen to less than half of its 1970s level. Recent research suggests that rising concentration is indeed related to the deterioration in investment: after adjusting for firms’ expected profitability and considering a number of alternative explanations, increased concentration emerges as a key driver of falling investment after 2000.

Many firms have at least some wage-setting power derived from the willingness of their employees to accept lower wages than they could earn elsewhere. Economists attempt to quantify this employee willingness to accept lower wages in terms of the so-called labor supply elasticity. That is, what percent lower employment would a firm expect if it offered 1 percent lower wages? In general, firms face relatively inelastic labor supply.

There is substantial variation in employer concentration across the country: for example, parts of the Northeast and Southern California have HHI—a measure of business concentration—below 1,500, while numerous rural areas in the Great Plains have HHI above 5,000, indicating extreme concentration.

The Federal Trade Commission almost always blocks mergers that would leave only one or two remaining competitors, while mergers leaving three or four competitors are only sometimes challenged. In recent years, antitrust regulators have become much less likely to act against mergers that would leave five, six, or seven competitors, while becoming slightly more likely to block mergers that would leave only one to four competitors.