Press Release
The Foreign-Born Population in Upstate New York
November 2, 2007
Note to Editors

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York today released The Foreign-Born Population in Upstate New York, the latest article in the Bank’s research series Second District Highlights.

A rising number of highly educated foreign-born residents in upstate New York are playing a unique role in the region’s workforce, according to authors James Orr, Susan Wieler and Joseph Pereira, whose research draws interesting comparisons to upstate New York’s native-born residents and the foreign-born in New York City.

Their analysis shows that the share of recent foreign-born arrivals (since 1980) to upstate New York’s metropolitan areas with college and post-graduate degrees exceeds that of native-born residents. These highly educated workers are relatively concentrated in highly skilled jobs that stress quantitative skills and scientific knowledge, complementing the skills of native-born workers who tend to be more concentrated in occupations that require English fluency and knowledge of the local culture and/or legal system.

By comparison, New York City’s foreign-born residents have a substantially lower percentage of college or post-graduate degrees than foreign-born residents in the upstate New York region, according to Orr, Wieler and Pereira.

James Orr is an assistant vice president in the Microeconomic and Regional Studies Function of the Bank’s Research and Statistics Group; Susan Wieler is a former economist at the Bank; Joseph Pereira is a sociologist and Director of the Data Service Center at the Center for Urban Research of the City University of New York.

The Foreign-Born Population in Upstate New York ››

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