Wage Inequality of Mexican Immigrants by Type of Job Qualification in the United States

Abstract

The objective of this research is to analyze the characteristics of the labor market insertion of Mexicans by type of qualification and their wage differences in relation to native workers in the United States. The hypothesis is that there is a wage inequality between Mexican migrant workers and native workers, accentuated among skilled workers, due to a segmentation of the U.S. labor market. The methodology used to analyze each of the components that add up to the wage gap between Mexican and native workers is the Ñopo decomposition. The results showed the opposite of what is established by the human capital theory since the wage difference between Mexicans inmigrants and natives by type of job qualification is mostly unexplainable from a statistical point of view and escapes modeling. This means that having citizenship and education does not eliminate the differences between Mexicans and natives. This allows us to accept the hypothesis, except in the case of low-skilled Mexican immigrants, since they have a wage differential in their favor.