Migration and business cycles

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 1736236210

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-111544

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Jerome, Harry

Title:: Migration and business cycles

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: National Bureau of Economic Research

Year of publication:: 1926

Scope:: 256 S.

Digitisation:: 2020

Collection:: Economics Books

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Chapter

Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Chapter II. Significant features of migration

Collection:: Economics Books

SIGNIFICANT FEATURES OF MIGRATION 47 for example, in 1910, only 8.7 per cent were foreign born, whereas 48.0 per cent of those in mining and 31.9 per cent of those in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits have a foreign nativity. Of those classified as laborers in 1910, however, the foreign born represent 50.1 per cent of those in mining, 38.5 per cent in manu- facturing and mechanical pursuits, and 27.4 per cent of all classified as laborers. It is obvious that for reasons of incapacity or difficulty in ad- justment to American conditions, the immigrant is doing more than his per capita proportion of the common labor of industry. If the statistics gave us separate data for the newly arrived immigrant it seems unquestionable that an even greater proportion would .be found in the ranks of the unskilled. The percentage of laborers is particularly high among the im- migrants of certain races. To illustrate, for the immigration years 1899 to 1910, three-fourths or more of the Greeks, the Slovaks, the South Italians, and the Poles were either general laborers or farm laborers. On the other hand, forty per cent or more of the Scotch, English, Welsh, and Hebrews are listed as skilled. Occupational Changes. The preponderance of unskilled among the immigrants and the tendency, particularly among the farmers and agricultural laborers, to abandon their old-country occupations upon arrival and thus to lose any opportunity fully to utilize their previous industrial ex- perience, is clearly evidenced by the statistics of occupations of immigrants and emigrants in Table 8. In the immigration years 1908 to 1923, 26 per cent of immigrants were classified as “laborers,” while 70 per cent of emigrants are placed in this class. On the other hand, 25 per cent of immigrants and less than 2 per cent of emigrants are listed as farm laborers; and the skilled who compose 22 per cent of the immigrants were only 12 per cent of the emigrants. Even after allowing for a con- siderable degree of probable inaccuracy in the data, and also for the fact that probably a smaller proportion of foreign-born farmers and and farm laborers than of industrial workers emigrate, the conclusion seems unavoidable that many from the “farm laborer” and “skilled” occupations are in this country engaged in unskilled occupations in factories, mines, and construction operations. Mr. Louis Block: "Quarterly Publication of the American Statistical Association, June, 1921, pp. 750- 764, “Occupations of Immigrants Before and After Coming to the United States.”

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