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Number of Foreign-Born Workers Employed in U.S. Hits Record High

Unemployment rate for foreign-born workers drops to 4.4 percent

Job fair / AP
November 6, 2015

The number of foreign-born workers employed in the United States hit a record high in October as the unemployment rate for the demographic dropped to 4.4 percent, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

In October, there were 25,120,000 foreign-born workers who had a job. According to the BLS, a foreign-born person is one who resides in the United States but who was born outside the country. Undocumented immigrants and refugees may be included in the data set, since the BLS does not distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants.

Last month, there were 24,928,000 foreign-born workers employed, which means that the number has increased by 192,000 since then.

There are 3,745,000 more foreign-born workers employed today than when President Obama took office in January 2009.

While the number of employed foreign-born workers is increasing, so is the number of native-born workers. Since July, the number of employed native-born workers has declined every month, but finally rose again in October.

In October, the number of native-born workers increased by 545,000 individuals.

The unemployment rate for foreign-born workers dropped to 4.4 percent in October from 4.6 percent in September. The unemployment rate is lower for the foreign-born than it is for native-born workers, who saw their unemployment rate unchanged at 4.9 percent.