The Postpandemic U.S. Immigration Surge: New Facts and Inflationary Implications

Anton Cheremukhin, Sewon Hur, Ronald Mau, Karel Mertens, Alexander Richter and Xiaoqing Zhou

No 2407, Working Papers from Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

Abstract: The U.S. experienced an extraordinary postpandemic surge in unauthorized immigration. This paper combines administrative data on border encounters and immigration court records with household survey data to document two new facts about these immigrants: They tend to be hand-to-mouth consumers and low-skilled workers that complement the existing workforce. We build these features into a model with capital, household heterogeneity and population growth to study the inflationary effects of this episode. Contrary to the popular view, we find little effect on inflation, as the increase in supply was largely offset by an increase in demand.

Keywords: immigration; population growth; inflation; skills; hand-to-mouth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E21 E22 E31 F22 J11 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38
Date: 2024-10-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int, nep-lab, nep-mac, nep-mig, nep-mon and nep-ure
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:feddwp:98919

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DOI: 10.24149/wp2407

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