Immigrants are crucial to the maintenance and growth of the U.S. workforce. In the coming decades, there will be jobs for immigrants with all levels of skills, and manufacturers, as well as other employers, will continue to need and hire immigrants. Strategies and models that improve the skills of these new entrants to the workforce—and that streamline their ability to keep pace with changes in industry and to succeed in higher-wage, more skilled jobs—make sound economic sense.
Goal
The primary goal is to identify effective employer-based strategies and models for upgrading the skills of the immigrant workforce. These strategies and models must be transferable to or adaptable by key stakeholders, with a focus on firms employing up to 1,000 people.
The strategies and models could be implemented by:
- Employers with immigrants in their workforce;
- Intermediaries seeking to expand their services to employers with immigrants in their workforce; or
- Service providers, especially those in the public sector, that want to leverage public funds to maximize benefits for workers with limited English proficiency and their employers.
Rationale
After shedding jobs in the 1970s and 80s and adjusting to the pressures of globalization, American manufacturers are hiring. And, as often as not, the workers who show up to fill the positions are immigrants. Over the past fifteen years, job vacancies in manufacturing industries have largely been filled by workers from Mexico, Cambodia, Honduras, Liberia, Poland, Brazil, and nearly every other country with a population that sees the U.S. labor market as an opportunity for a better life.
Immigrant workers currently number over 20 million, or 14 percent of the total U.S. workforce. Moreover, they are crucial to the maintenance and growth of that workforce:
- Immigrants are projected to account for half of working-age population growth between 2006 and 2015—and all the growth between 2016 and 2035.
- The number of foreign-born workers increased at a faster rate than did the native workforce over the past decade.
- From 1990 to 2000, more than 50 percent of the growth of the entire civilian workforce was due to immigrants. All of the growth of the labor force in the northeast was due to immigrants.
- More than 90 percent of new immigrants who were active in the labor force found employment (although unemployment is higher for immigrants).
Some immigrants arrive with advanced degrees and a mastery of English, but the vast majority come with little more than the idea that there are jobs to be had in the United States. Most of these immigrants have little or no English proficiency, and many have low degrees of literacy in their own language.
The task of integrating this diverse group into the U.S. workforce and ensuring that they are productive workers takes on a variety of forms. Educating the Immigrant Workforce is investigating and will report on employer practices for increasing the English proficiency of their workforce. The report will provide a framework for understanding the types of practice regarding training the immigrant workforce—and practical information on what constitutes promising practice.
Methodology
Phase One, led by the Manufacturing Institute, consisted of an extensive written survey circulated to the members of the National Association of Manufacturers. The survey was fielded to 6,365 employers and elicited 327 responses. It identified lack of English proficiency among workers--and poor communications resulting from that-- as the primary drawback to hiring an immigrant workforce. The survey also found that this is the main arena in which employers would be interested in receiving assistance.
Phase Two, a joint effort of JFF and the Manufacturing Institute, responds to those findings. With a focus on improving individual performance at the workplace, it is identifying work-based models and promising practices for delivering English language instruction for entry-level workers in manufacturing. This research reflects the responsibility of the funder, the Office of Adult and Vocational Education, for Title II of the Workforce Investment Act, which includes allocating funds for English as a Second Language. To help OVAE utilize those resources productively, a second research goal is to learn from manufacturing employers and other community stakeholders regarding their experiences with ESL instruction.
As a result, the research has two parallel tracks. One is to identify models and promising practices of English language instruction in the workplace. The second is to learn about the attitudes of employers, English language instruction providers, and various workforce intermediaries toward workplace-based English language instruction, with a focus on identifying polices and practices that promote or obstruct the delivery of work-based English language instruction.
The research uses four criteria to identify promising practices:
- Dual-customer: Practices that benefit both the employer and the employee
- Sustainability. Practices that would continue beyond the current offering
- Scale. Practices that operate on a large scale or have the potential for the current operator or organization to expand them significantly
- Replicability. Practices that have the potential to be implemented by other operators or organizations
Partners
Advisory Group
A 16-member Advisory Group provided input on the scope of the issue, the kinds of efforts to explore as promising practices, and specific examples of such practices. The Advisory Group included representatives of the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Labor Employment and Training Administration, the Working for American Institute of the AFL-CIO, Urban Institute, City Colleges of Chicago, Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants, the New England Literacy Resource Center, Dorcas Place Adult and Family Literacy, the National Immigration Forum, and National Council of La Raza.
Funders
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