April 17, 2006 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Foreign born and unemployment, 2005

The unemployment rate of the foreign born was 4.6 percent in 2005, down from 5.5 percent in 2004.

[Chart data—TXT]

Among the native born, the unemployment rate was 5.2 percent in 2005, also down from 5.5 percent in the prior year. In 2005, the unemployment rate of the foreign born was lower than that of the native born for the first time since the data series began in 1996.

Men made up a larger proportion of the foreign-born labor force (60 percent) in 2005 than they did of the native-born labor force (52 percent). Between 2004 and 2005, the unemployment rate for foreign-born men declined from 5.0 to 4.1 percent. For native-born men, the rate fell from 5.8 percent to 5.3 percent.

Over the year, the unemployment rate for foreign-born women declined from 6.3 to 5.4 percent. For native-born women, the rate fell from 5.3 percent to 5.0 percent.

These data are from the Current Population Survey. Find more information in "Foreign-born Workers: Labor Force Characteristics in 2005" (PDF) (TXT), news release USDL 06-640.