The labor supply of undocumented immigrants

Over 11 million undocumented persons reside in the United States. This paper examines the labor supply of this population. Using newly developed methods that impute undocumented status for persons in the Current Population Surveys, the study documents a number of findings. The labor force participation rate of undocumented men is larger than that of natives or legal immigrants; this gap widened over the past two decades; and the labor supply of undocumented men is more inelastic than that of other groups. In contrast, the participation rate of undocumented women is far below that of both legal immigrants and natives.