The impact of immigration and offshoring on American jobs is far more complicated than directly replacing workers

The standard narrative on immigration and offshoring is that these practices uniformly harm American workers by providing cheap, alternative sources of labor. Using data taken from U.S. manufacturing industries between 2000 and 2007, Gianmarco Ottaviano, Giovanni Peri, and Greg Wright examine the impact of offshoring and immigration on native manufacturing workers. They find that, while offshoring production or hiring immigrants may directly displace American workers, the overall increase in production from this restructuring indirectly increases the demand for native workers, often in more complex roles.