Immigrant workers: vital to the US COVID-19 response, disproportionately vulnerable

Six million immigrant workers are at the frontlines of keeping US residents healthy and fed during the [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 pandemic. While the foreign born represented 17 per cent of the 156 million civilians working in 2018, they account for larger shares in coronavirus-response frontline occupations: 29 per cent of all physicians and 38 per cent of home health aides, for example. They also represent significant shares of workers cleaning hospital rooms, staffing grocery stores, and producing food. The foreign born also are over-represented in sectors most immediately devastated by mass layoffs: Restaurants and hotels, office cleaning services, and in-home childcare, among them. All told, another 6 million immigrants work in industries that MPI has identified as some of the hardest hit, meaning that collectively 12 million immigrant workers are at the leading edge of the response to and impacts from the pandemic. The first section of this fact sheet reviews the roles immigrant workers serve in industries at the frontlines of the COVID-19 response. The second section discusses the jobs immigrant workers fill within industries that are laying off large numbers of workers.

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