Study: Immigrants More Likely to Start Businesses That Create Jobs than Native-Born Americans

A new study published this month in the American Economic Review: Insights found that immigrants are more frequently involved in founding companies of all sizes, compared to native-born Americans.

Co-authored by MIT economist Pierre Azoulay, the study determined that, per capita, immigrants are about 80% more likely to open a new business, compared to U.S.-born citizens. On average, those firms also have about 1% more employees than those founded by U.S. natives.

News.MIT.edu: "Taking firm creation into account, the results indicate that immigration to the U.S. is associated with a net gain in job availability, contrary to the common perception that immigrants fill jobs that U.S.-born workers would otherwise have."

“The findings suggest that immigrants act more as ‘job creators’ than ‘job takers’ and that non-U.S. born founders play outsized roles in U.S. high-growth entrepreneurship,” the authors write in the paper."

The study supports research we noted in 2020 by Professor Benjamin Jones of the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and several colleagues. They found that immigrants are almost twice as likely as native-born Americans to start a new business.

They too found that immigrants actually improve the economic outcomes for native-born workers.

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By: Don Lam & Curated Content