Immigrant Population Helps Power NYC Economy

Want to know how important our immigrant populations are to the life of New York City and how much we contribute to our local economies?

• Immigrants earn $100 billion in total income – that represents 1/3 of earnings in our city.
• Almost half of New York City’s workforce is composed of immigrants who were born outside the United States.
• Over 83,000 immigrants own businesses in New York.
• Population estimates show that there are some 3.3 immigrants in New York, coming from more than 150 different countries. That represents 40% of our total population.
• You may hear that immigrants come to the US to live off government programs, but know what numbers show. Immigrants are employed at virtually the same rate as U.S. born residents – at 71% and 68% respectively.
• Immigrants pay taxes every year. An estimated $8 billion in City and State personal income taxes and approximately $2 billion in City property taxes.
• 46% or 451,000, of the City’s 991,000 homeowners are foreign-born immigrants.
• Immigrants drive core sectors: roughly half of all workers in core New York City sectors, including technology (47 percent), financial analysis (44 percent), entertainment (54 percent), and medical (50 percent) are foreign-born.
• Between the 1990s and 2000s, the number of immigrants with a graduate degree has jumped by more than 60 percent. Since the 1980s, the number of immigrants coming to NYC with a graduate degree has more than doubled.

This information comes from the 2015 American Community Survey of the U.S. Census.