Highly Skilled Immigrants Now Outnumber Lower-Skilled Ones In The United States

The Brooking Institute has just released a report The Geography of Immigrant Skills: Educational Profiles of Metropolitan Areas, which holds some surprising data:  highly skilled immigrants now outnumber lower-skilled ones in the United States. Another big take away from the report is that nationally, more immigrants hold college degrees than lack high-school diplomas.

Tara Bahrampour, of the Washington Post has the full story here:

This shift in America’s immigration population, based on census data, is summarized in a report released Thursday by the Brookings Institution. It found that 30 percent of the country’s working-age immigrants, regardless of legal status, have at least a bachelor’s degree, while 28 percent lack a high school diploma.

The report also tells an important demographic story about the way immigrant population has changed over the last decade:

As the number of working-age immigrants in the United States has swelled, from 14.6 million in 1994 to 29.7 million in 2010, the numbers of highly skilled and lower-skilled immigrants have risen, but the highly skilled sector has risen faster, according to the report. Among the causes are the recent rise in the number of international students and of temporary H-1B visas, for which a bachelor’s degree is usually required, the report said.

One take away from this is that there has been a change in the way in which immigrant populations are moving thru the education system. As this other Washington Post article shows, the Hispanic population in general is showing higher educational attainment, with more Hispanic students finishing high school and attendance at 2-year colleges nearly doubling. These higher levels of educational attainment may also explain the rise in the skill level ratio.

Below is a graph outlining these changes: