Lower wages in low-productive firms increase immigrant-native disparities

The earnings gap between immigrants and natives working in the private sector has increased since the 1990s. More productive firms pay higher wages, but immigrants more often work in low-productive firms and are less likely to move to more high-productive companies.

The figure shows average income and share of immigrants among the employees of firms with different average productivity. Each decile contains 10 percent of the firms. Decile 1 has the lowest productivity, decile 10 highest.