by: Elior Cohen and Jeff Biddle
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RWP 22-12, September 2022; updated June 2026

How do immigration restrictions affect the wages of low-skilled workers? We study the 1920s U.S. national-origins quotas, which abruptly and unevenly curtailed immigration from key source countries, generating sharp labor-supply shocks across local markets. Using newly digitized annual wage data for low-skilled laborers from 1910–1929, we show that wages rose faster in markets more dependent on restricted-origin immigrants, with effects emerging soon after 1920, intensifying through the mid-1920s, and persisting over time. Evidence on wage dynamics and mechanisms indicates that these gains reflect sustained labor scarcity rather than mechanical compositional changes.

JEL Classifications: J61, N31, N32

Article Citation

  • Cohen, Elior, and Jeff Biddle. 2022. “Immigration Restrictions and the Wages of Low-Skilled Labor: Evidence from the 1920s.” Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Research Working Paper no. 22-12, September. Available at External Linkhttps://doi.org/10.18651/RWP2022-12

Related Research

  • Abramitzy, Ram, Philipp Ager, Leah Platt Boustan, Elior Cohen, and Casper Worm Hansen. Forthcoming. "The Effect of Immigration Restrictions on Local Labor Markets: Lessons from the 1920s Border Closure." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.

  • Price, Joseph, Christian vom Lehn, and Riley Wilson. 2020. “The Winners and Losers of Immigration: Evidence from Linked Historical Data." National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper no. 27156, May. Available at External Linkhttps://doi.org/10.3386/w27156

  • Tabellini, Marco. 2020. “Gifts of the Immigrants, Woes of the Natives: Lessons from the Age of Mass Migration." The Review of Economic Studies, vol. 87, no. 1, pp. 454–486. Available at External Linkhttps://doi.org/10.1093/restud/rdz027

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City or the Federal Reserve System.

Author

Elior Cohen

Senior Economist

Elior Cohen is a senior economist at the Economic Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. His research interests lie at the intersection of labor and pub…

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