CHAPTER IIT 
EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMMIGRANTS 
The Significance of a Measure of Employment Opportunity. 
With the passing of the era of abundant and fertile free land, 
industrial employment rather than agricultural opportunity has 
been the lodestone attracting the foreign worker to our shores. 
Particularly within the last three or four decades the typical im- 
migrant has been a prospective wage earner seeking employment in 
factory, mine, or construction camp. 
Data concerning fluctuations in the employment of wage earners 
are, accordingly, particularly pertinent to our study. The cycle of 
employment is the aspect of the business cycle which is of direct 
meaning to the immigrant. It is the most tangible measure of the 
conditions affecting his economic welfare; and hence it affords the 
obvious and logical basis for appraising the influence upon migration 
of fluctuations in economic opportunities and the celerity with 
which immigration and emigration currents respond to such changes. 
The Ideal Measure. 
The ideal index of employment, for our purpose, would cover all 
of those occupations in which immigrants engage in large numbers 
and would indicate, not merely the variations in the number of 
workers employed, but also the extent of part-time and over-time 
employment. 
Not only that, but to give a complete picture of the relative 
economic opportunity afforded the immigrant, our ideal index would 
be adjusted to variations in real wage rates, that is, in money rates 
reduced to terms of comparable purchasing power by allowance for 
changes in the prices of those articles which comprise the budget of 
the immigrant worker. In short, such an index would make al- 
Jowance for both the volume of employment and the real rate of 
compensation and thus measure changes in the real earnings in the 
immigrant industries. 
An index of employment portraying the condition of employment 
for the unskilled laborer would be particularly valuable, for it is 
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