The high rate of employment for Mexicans in New York

In a time of widespread joblessness, Mexicans in New York have proved unusually adept at finding and keeping work. Of the city’s 10 largest immigrant groups, they have the highest rate of employment and are more likely to hold a job than New York’s native-born population, according to an analysis of the most recently available census data. They are even employed at a greater rate than Mexicans nationwide.

And as they have filled the city’s restaurant kitchens and building sites, they have acquired a reputation for an extraordinary work ethic.

There is more here.  There are interesting implications for whether current unemployment is all about demand and whether marginal productivities justify the expected costs of hiring (some groups of) non-Mexicans:

One reason Mexicans have found work in such numbers, experts say, is that many are illegal immigrants, and less likely to report workplace abuses to the authorities for fear of deportation.

“Illegal immigrants are very convenient,” said Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan research group in Washington. “Employers are quite interested in employing people who are willing to work and to overlook some labor laws.”

…Across the country, immigrants in general are more likely to be employed than the American-born. They tend to be more willing to move in pursuit of jobs and to take any job they can find, especially if they lack access to unemployment benefits.