Courtesy of Comptroller Stringer’s Office
By Forum Staff
Immigrants comprise nearly half of the city’s workforce, with virtually every industry now relying on workers who were born abroad, according to a new analysis by City Comptroller Scott Stringer that also indicated that immigrants now account for roughly half of all workers in the Big Apple’s “core sectors, including technology, finance, entertainment, and medicine.”
The comptroller released “Our Immigrant Population Helps Power NYC Economy” a little more than a week before the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump.
“We have not just a moral imperative to be true to our values and stand up to anti-immigrant policies, but an economic imperative as well. The contributions that immigrants make to our economy are enormous,” Stringer said. “Religious bans, threats of mass deportations, registries—all are antithetical to our legacy as New Yorkers and Americans. We hope this data shows the extraordinary impact immigrants make in our City, and we hope it demonstrates why supporting New Yorkers, no matter where they’re from, is the right thing to do for our economy.”
According to the analysis’s data:
- The city has 3.3 million immigrants from more than 150 countries, making up 46 percent of NYC’s employed population and almost 40 percent of the city’s total population.
- With more than $100 billion in earned income, immigrants make 32 percent of total earnings in the five boroughs.
- More than 83,000 city business owners are immigrants, as well as 54 percent of all self-employed New Yorkers.
- In NYC, immigrants are employed at virtually the same rate as U.S.-born residents – at 71 percent and 68 percent, respectively.
- Every year, immigrant New York families pay an estimated $8 billion in City and State personal income taxes, and approximately $2 billion in City property taxes.
- Immigrants are homeowners: 46 percent, or 451,000, of the City’s 991,000 homeowners are foreign-born.
- Roughly half of all workers in core city sectors, including technology (47 percent), financial analysis (44 percent), entertainment (54 percent), and medical (50 percent) are foreign-born, Stringer noted.
- Between the 1990s and 2000s, the number of immigrants with a graduate degree has jumped by more than 60 percent. Since the 1980s, the number of immigrants coming to NYC with a graduate degree has more than doubled.
“New York City is an international hub – and our economy relies on a worldwide talent pool. When immigrants are threatened, when their ability to live, work, and raise their families is compromised – our entire City pays a costly price. We must all keep standing up and speaking out, because no matter how long your family has been here, immigrants must be welcome in New York City,” Stringer said.
In August, Trump delivered a detailed immigration policy address at a campaign stop in Arizona.
“If we are going to make our immigration system work, then we have to be prepared to talk honestly and without fear about these important and sensitive issues,” Trump said. “For instance, we have to listen to the concerns that working people have over the record pace of immigration and its impact on their jobs, wages, housing, schools, tax bills, and living conditions. We also have to be honest about the fact that not everyone who seeks to join our country will be able to successfully assimilate. It is our right as a sovereign nation to choose immigrants that we think are the likeliest to thrive and flourish here.”
