State policymakers have focused plenty of energy in recent years on understanding NH’s decline in domestic migration—that is, the number of people either leaving or coming to NH.
But that focus ignores an important piece of NH’s economic and demographic future: foreign immigration. Yes, the state’s overall foreign-born population remains relatively small at less than 6 percent (compared to 13 percent on average nationally). But it matters. In fact, without foreign immigration, NH would have seen a net outmigration during the past five years instead of the slight increase we did experience.
New Hampshire’s foreign-born population covers a range of individuals in terms of geographic origin, level of education and economic stability. Understanding that variation is critical if state policymakers, businesses and service providers want a better grasp of the benefits and costs of immigration to the state’s economic future.
Immigrants in NH include families that moved here directly from a foreign country and professionals who came to NH after living in another state. Schools heavily recruit foreign students to NH for both undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Businesses increasingly find themselves looking abroad for the skilled labor they need and file H-1B visas. And NH’s foreign born also include refugees, usually resettled here by a federal refugee placement agency.
Better Educated
New Hampshire’s foreign-born population, as a whole, is better educated than those born in the state. Almost 58 percent of the foreign born in NH have at least some college, compared to 52 percent of NH’s native-born residents.
But that data needs to be broken down as the foreign-born population encompasses two extremes. New Hampshire's foreign-born population, broadly speaking, fall into two categories: those with little education (no high school degree), and those with high levels of education (a graduate degree).
A Critical Workforce
A greater share of the state’s foreign-born residents is in the prime working-age cohort of 25 to 54 years. With the working-age population in NH expected to decline in the coming decades, increased foreign immigration could slow that trend.
New Hampshire’s foreign born hold a disproportionate share of lower wage jobs in the food and personal service industries, making them a greater portion of the working poor. A little more than one-fifth of NH’s foreign-born residents are in households with incomes between 100 percent and 200 percent of the federal poverty level guidelines, compared to 14 percent for the native-born population.
But at the same time, the foreign born are much more likely to be employed in high-paying jobs in computer and mathematical sciences, since many hold advanced degrees in those fields.
Changing Patterns
While NH has relatively few immigrants, that has not always been the case. In the early 20th century, as much as one-quarter of NH’s population was born outside of the United States. That was because foreigners with little English or formal education were all but guaranteed decent work in the booming mills, factories and logging operations from Berlin to Nashua. Most of those jobs are gone.
The current immigration wave is largely bypassing NH and the rest of Northern New England. America’s foreign-born population is growing rapidly in southern and western states, with much lower in-migration in the Northeast. There are numerous reasons for this, among them that foreign immigrants are more likely to settle in major metropolitan areas. These places tend to offer more opportunity and are more likely to have a community of existing immigrants. New Hampshire—and Northern New England more broadly—has few such urban areas. Combined with the recent drop in in-migration from other states, this bypass could forecast demographic troubles for NH in the years ahead.
From a purely economic perspective, attracting foreigners—particularly highly educated ones—could be an advantage. What is NH’s strategy? Does it include new approaches to educating foreign-born youth or strategies for tapping into the highly-educated foreign-born population? Minimally, policymakers and business leaders must incorporate foreign immigration into the demographic debate.
Dennis Delay, right, is the economist and Daniel Barrick is deputy director of the NH Center for Public Policy Studies, an independent, nonprofit, non-partisan organization pursuing research on public policy. For more information, visit www.nhpolicy.org.
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