Download or read book Working Their Way Up? US Immigrants' Changing Labor Market Assimilation in the Age of Mass Migration written by William J. Collins and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether immigrants advance in labor markets during their lifetime relative to natives is a fundamental question in the economics of immigration. We examine linked census records for five cohorts, spanning 1850-1940, when immigration to the United States was at its peak. We find a U-shaped pattern of assimilation: immigrants were "catching up" to natives in the early and later cohorts, but not in between. This change was not due to shifts in immigrants' source countries. Instead, it was rooted in men's early-career occupations, which we associate with structural change, strengthening complementarities, and large immigration waves in the 1840s and 1900s.