he Great Lakes region, an area often referred

to as the “Rust Belt,” once represented the

pinnacle of American prosperity. Millions of

workers built the global automobile industry and poured

hot steel in a booming economy that rewarded them

with good pay and benets. While the region’s economy

needed and eroded payrolls. These developments led

to decades of lackluster economic growth that was

felt most acutely by the people once employed by the

hardest-hit industries.

The fortunes of the working-class in the Great Lakes

region has become a centerpiece of the national

conversation on the state of the economy, and was

a focus of the 2016 presidential campaign. On the

campaign trail, immigration became tied to a larger

conversation on the decline of once vibrant industries

the economic angst facing the region and singled out

immigrants as the cause.

The reality, however, reects a very dierent state

of aairs. While the region indeed lost more than

one million working-class jobs and saw real wages of

workers with less than a bachelor’s degree fall by 6.4

percent between 2000 and 2015, immigrants have

actually helped to revitalize and strengthen industries

like manufacturing and healthcare, creating jobs for

Americans that once seemed lost forever. In many

vibrant Great Lakes metro regions, foreign-born

residents have also helped oset decades of population

decline, reinvigorating local economies with new

businesses, an increased tax base, and consumer

spending that has helped drive local growth. These

many bright spots in the Great Lakes region’s economy

and reasons for optimism for the future. Using data

primarily from the American Community Survey for the

seven states and 98 metropolitan areas in the region,

our research shows that immigration has been and will

continue to be key to regional recovery, as immigrants

bring with them the talent, labor, entrepreneurial

spirit, and spending power needed to help x the Great

Lakes' economic engine. Far from being the cause of

the economic struggles that have set in over the past

decline in nine out of the top 25 metro areas in the region. The Detroit and Pittsburgh metro areas, for instance,

would have shrunk by more than 200,000 and 100,000 people, respectively, if not for the arrival of immigrants.

While only 51.1 percent of U.S.-born residents in the Great Lakes region were working-age in 2015, more than

70 percent of the area’s immigrants fell into that age band. That allowed immigrants to drive almost two-thirds

of regional growth in the size of the working-age population between 2000 and 2015. This was vital for an area

facing a rapidly aging population. The number of U.S.-born elderly increased from nine million to 11 million

during the same time period.

In the Great Lakes region, where only 29.2 percent of the U.S.-born population ages 25 and above have at

workers. This is possible, in part, because immigrants ll the higher-skilled jobs that allow companies to stay

local, as opposed to moving oshore. Foreign-born workers made up one out of every seven manufacturing

engineers in 2015.

Between 2000 and 2015, more than four out of every ve new jobs created in the Great Lakes region—or 80.3

percent—were healthcare positions. This was good news for the U.S.-born working-class, which gained more

than 570,000 new healthcare jobs. By lling the high-skilled jobs that allow doctors’ oces and hospitals to

thrive and expand, immigrants helped make such supersized growth possible. Despite representing 7.3 percent

of the region’s population, immigrants made up 27 percent of the region’s physicians and surgeons in 2015.

miscellaneous farmworkers in the region in 2015—including those who harvest crops by hand.

The number of immigrant entrepreneurs grew by more than 120,000 between 2000 and 2015, while fewer

U.S.-born residents took the risk of starting their own businesses. By 2015, more than one out of every 10

entrepreneurs in the region was foreign-born. Immigrants also made up more than one out of every ve of the

region’s Main Street business owners, operations that created close to 239,000 working-class jobs for U.S.-born

workers between 2000 and 2015 alone.

Immigrants punch above their weight when it comes to their economic power as consumers. In 2015, they held

close to $130 billion in spending power, or 8.2 percent of the region’s total, although they represented just 7.3

problems, they do have an important role to play as

the region—and the country as a whole—shifts from

traditional manufacturing to more innovation-driven

industries, including advanced manufacturing. Without

enough high-skilled talent to sustain our changing

economy, working-class families will suer.

While this report demonstrates some promising trends,

the area’s future will depend on community leaders

embracing the 21st-century innovation economy—and

also, immigration. Some leaders in local government,

every four working-class people in the United States

lived in the area, which we refer to as the Great Lakes

region throughout this report. The 2016 election threw a

million. On top of that, real wages for that group fell by

6.4 percent.

services, and the combined oil, gas, and mining

sector—both added jobs for the U.S.-born working-

class and increased their wages. The rapid growth in

oil, gas, and mining appears largely driven by a boom

in shale gas extraction, a source of employment that

has shrunk considerably since 2015.

2010, largely reinventing itself through high-tech and

advanced manufacturing work.

population. In 2015, the region was home to 5.6 million

immigrants, a group that made up 7.3 percent of the

overall population. The thousands of new immigrants

arriving in the region each year, however, play an outsize

role in reversing population decline, a factor we discuss

in detail in this report. They also start new businesses

much of the academic literature, we dene working-

class as anyone with less than a bachelor’s degree.

Immigrants are individuals who were born abroad to

non-U.S.-citizen parents. The Great Lakes region, as we

dene it, encompasses the historically manufacturing-

heavy area largely in the Midwest and Upper Midwest,

educated immigrant millennials who moved into the

region, 29.1 percent were graduate students pursuing

advanced degrees and close to one out of every four

were Science, Technology, Engineering, or Math-related

() workers replenishing the high-skilled labor force.

Given that immigrants have been found to earn more

patents than the U.S.-born, these skilled individuals help

increase the level of innovation in the region. One past

 study found that 74 percent of patents awarded to

policymakers have realized they could see even more

economic benets if a larger share of the region’s many

international students remained in the country after

graduation. The Global Talent Retention Initiative of

Michigan, a program of Global Detroit, for instance,

has created a registry of employers willing to hire

immigrants and international graduates. It also

hosts semi-annual job fairs attracting more than 300

graduate  students and conducts other on-campus

networking opportunities connecting international

behalf of new hires.

The foreign-born population has helped the region

develop a workforce with much-needed skills in .

As our economy evolves to be more technology driven,

such skills are incredibly important to employers. In the

short supply. Past  research has found that in 2015,

21 jobs were advertised online in Indiana for every one

unemployed  worker in the state.

In Michigan,

In this environment, immigrants have emerged as

a crucial source of  talent. In 2015, they made

up roughly one out of every six  workers in the

region, despite making up 7.3 percent of the population

overall. In the region’s colleges and universities, they

also made up a large share of students graduating with

international students earned 41.2 percent of graduate-

intensive universities.

and rising competition from other regions—both

domestic and overseas—with cheaper labor costs. The

hemorrhaging of jobs continued into the 2000s.

Between 2000 and 2010, the Great Lakes region lost

almost 1.6 million manufacturing jobs. The bulk of

that economic blow fell on workers without bachelor’s

degrees: All but 18,000 of the jobs lost during that

period were positions that were once lled by working-

class individuals.

broader economic growth. While the number of jobs

in the region overall increased by 6.6 percent, jobs in

manufacturing grew by 8.5 percent. (See Figure 11.)

during a period when more than 250,000 working-class

manufacturing jobs were created in the region, the vast

majority of which, or 92.9 percent, went to workers who

were U.S.-born.

ike many cities in the Great Lakes region, the

U.S. auto industry. In the 1950s, the city was

Just 16,000 people

Like many university presidents, Proenza aimed to

draw talent and funding to campus. But he also strongly

expertise to drive economic growth for the region it

serves—something he came to call the Akron Model.

He expanded campus buildings into town, created

Polymers are long-chained molecules that, as Proenza

explains, “make up virtually everything we know and

value, including plastics, rubber, elastomers, coatings,

and most of ourselves.”

“There’s been a huge proliferation of small, medium, and

Ohio the largest employer of polymer-related products

in the country, and maybe the world.”

product to market later this year.

Beyond polymers, immigrant entrepreneurs have also

played a role helping Akron with another one of its

enduring problems: widespread vacancies downtown.

in the city in 2007. In North Hill, an old neighborhood

on the city’s northeast side, these refugees have opened

more than two dozen groceries, shops, and restaurants,

says Jason Segedy, Akron’s director of planning and

The immigrant-fueled revitalization continues a

pattern that began during World War I, when new

Americans from Italy and, later, Poland moved into the

neighborhood. But as immigration rates dropped and

people moved to the suburbs, the neighborhood fell

into decline. By the turn of the century, housing vacancy

One new North Hill business owner is Naresh Subba,

a Bhutanese refugee who opened a grocery store

with his brothers in 2011. He employs seven people,

and added three U.S.-born high school students this

small, it is almost ve times faster than the wage

increase experienced by the U.S.-born working-class

population in the region overall during that same period.

These promising trends were repeated in many

metropolitan areas. Seventeen of the top 25 metros

working-class individuals working in manufacturing

between 2010 and 2015. Albany, New York, took the

lead, with a 31.3 percent increase in U.S.-born working-

class employment in manufacturing, while Louisville,

competitive in a global economy. In an environment

where many highly educated Americans leave the

region, immigrants frequently step up to ll high-skilled

manufacturing positions and provide companies with

the talent they need to keep operations local. One out of

every seven manufacturing engineers in the Great Lakes

(See Figure 14.)

of their budgets on research and development. Such

rms, which are far dierent from more traditional

manufacturers, typically require a pool of highly

skilled workers to thrive.

Indeed, between 2000 and

2015, almost 150,000 of the new manufacturing jobs

created in the region required workers to have at least

a bachelor’s degree. If advanced manufacturing rms

making products like medical devices and electronics

were unable to nd enough talent locally, they could

as well. By 2015, almost 1.7

million working-class, U.S.-

born individuals held jobs in

advanced manufacturing. That

gure has been steadily rising:

Between 2010 and 2015, the

by 9.6 percent. Of the more than

160,000 new jobs created during

created for the working-class in

manufacturing have gone to U.S.-

born workers, as we discussed

above, many employers turn

to foreign-born workers to ll

jobs that often hold less appeal

for the U.S.-born. One prime

example is in the meatpacking

industry, a lesser known subset

of the manufacturing industry,

butchers and meat cutters in the region are foreign-born,

as are 45.2 percent of those with packaging and lling

jobs, the ones who take raw meat and prepare it for

shipment and sale.

Brittany Hibma, a career counselor in the Minneapolis-

employers in her area—Amazon, SkyChefs, and

-O Turkey, among them—come to rely on one

particular type of less-skilled manufacturing worker:

The thousands of refugees who have settled in the area

can include meatpacking jobs, janitorial work, or

manufacturing jobs on nights or weekends.

Hibma says that many refugees tend to stay in their

positions long term. This steady workforce has allowed

a whole host of employers, including  Direct, a

decision that has implications for many working-class

Americans, from the truckers who transport their

products to the warehouse workers who help store

it. Hibma says it is hard to overstate how important

which can be physically challenging with relatively

lower pay, as well as medical aides and technicians.

Immigrants have helped ll some of these jobs. As

nurses and home health aides, they provide care much

needed by the region’s seniors. Immigrants also help

ease the increasing shortage of psychiatrists, enhancing

alone has more than 163,000 days when its workers

suered from decreased productivity or missed days of

Lakes region build up one of its most promising engines

of job growth as well.

he Great Lakes region’s deep agricultural

roots are reected by its millions of acres of

farmland, as well as its history of producing

well-known crops. Michigan has long held a leading role

producing fresh fruits and vegetables, including apples,

sugar beets, and blueberries.

Sometimes overshadowed by other prominent industries

in the Great Lakes region, agriculture has emerged in

the region had less than a bachelor’s degree. Although

foreign-born laborers make up a signicant portion of

these workers—a factor we discuss in detail later—U.S.-

born workers are heavily represented as well. In 2015,

almost four out of every ve working-class agriculture

workers in the region were born in the United States.

(See Figure 22.) The sector also experienced slow but

steady growth: The Great Lakes region gained 13,000

new U.S.-born working-class agriculture jobs between

Not all of the new jobs for workers without a bachelor’s

degree, however, hold appeal for U.S.-born workers.

Most fresh fruits and vegetables require workers to pick

cleaning manure from barns, milking cows in the

early morning hours, and overseeing the birthing of

struggle to recruit U.S.-born workers to do them.

One

previous  study found that, even during a time when

unemployment stood high at 10.5 percent in North

Carolina in 2011, only 268 U.S.-born residents applied for

the 6,500 farm job openings, and merely seven stayed

until the end of the season.

handpick produce in the elds, rose by 26.5 percent.

That sharp of an increase was rare in the region during

that time period, a possible indication that farms were

competing for a limited and insucient pool of workers.

A shortage of farm laborers of this type has already been

well documented nationwide.

In this environment, immigrants have played a critical

role lling some of the most labor-intensive farm jobs.

While just 7.3 percent of the region’s total population is

foreign-born, such workers make up roughly one out

The willingness of immigrants to ll such labor-intensive

jobs helps the industry succeed and create more

wage for the U.S.-born working-class in the region. They

also are part of an expanding eld. Between 2000 and

2015, the number of agricultural managers without

bachelor’s degrees almost doubled, rising from roughly

9,500 positions to more than 18,000. A full 83.9 percent

of these newly created jobs went to the U.S.-born.

Of course, the viability of the region’s farms and

dairies is important not just to those who are directly

employed at them, but to a variety of other workers as

well. Nationally, it has been estimated that each on-farm

class wage in the region overall.

Without enough entry-level

farmworkers, the agriculture

sector would likely have to cut

back on its overall production,

farm-related sectors. Taking

fresh produce as an example,

one previous study by 

found that the nationwide

he Great Lakes region has a long tradition of

immigrants moving in and building successful

businesses from the ground up. As an immigrant

from Scotland, Andrew Carnegie led innovations in steel

production and founded the Carnegie Steel Company

in Pittsburgh in 1892.

an immigrant or the child of immigrants.

rms generated $1.3 trillion in revenue and employed

more than 3.3 million employees globally.

ago, the pattern of heavy immigrant entrepreneurship

continues in the region today. Foreign-born

entrepreneurs have been particularly important to the

region in recent years, as fewer U.S.-born residents

opted to take the risk of starting their own businesses. In

the Great Lakes region, the share of U.S.-born workers

between 1977 and 2005.

rates of entrepreneurship among the U.S.-born. In

2015, immigrants were more likely to be entrepreneurs

than their U.S.-born counterparts. (See Figure 25.):

That year 9.5 percent of the region’s immigrants were

entrepreneurs, compared to 7.8 percent

state where residents were considerably less likely to be

Tel Ganesan, an Indian immigrant, is one of many

successfully launched a high-tech rm. After graduating

mechanical engineering, Ganesan initially secured a job

at Chrysler. Unlike his colleagues who took these jobs

as their life-long careers, however, Ganesan dreamed of

starting his own business. “What’s the worst thing that

started Kyyba, a company that provided  and

engineering solutions to local businesses. By 2015,

the rm was generating $55 million in revenues and

Low living costs and low barriers to entry have made it

easy for immigrants to continue growing businesses in

Detroit.

in business generation among the U.S.-born population.

Between 2000 and 2015, the number of U.S.-born

entrepreneurs in Detroit dropped by 8.5 percent. At the

same time, the number of foreign-born entrepreneurs

was rising quickly, increasing by 38.1 percent.

mentioned previously, this sector was one of the few

that both grew wages and added jobs for the U.S.-born

working-class between 2000 and 2015. Roughly 84,000

additional working-class jobs were created in this sector

during that time period alone.

Among the many foreign-born entrepreneurs in the

region is Dhiraj Rajaram, who came to the United States

and China, the Chicago-based company now employs

850 people.

5-Hour , which was founded by

an immigrant from India, has a similar story. This

beverage giant now employs hundreds of workers at its

surprise that the immigrant share of business owners

in the Great Lakes region is far larger than their share

of the area’s overall population. (See Figure 26.) In 2015,

one out of every ten entrepreneurs in the region was

born abroad—a notable fact given that they make up just

7.3 percent of the population. Those 310,000 immigrant

that year.