Report: Immigrants are Taking Our Teens' Jobs, Too

Further fueling the national debate over immigration, a new report finds that the percentage of U.S.-born teenagers in the workforce has fallen as the share of immigrant workers rises.

The Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington, D.C.-based group that supports tighter border controls, found that the number of U.S.-born teenagers not in the labor force increased from 4.7 million in 1994 to 8.1 million in 2007. In the summer of 2009, the figure stood at 8.8 million.

The percentage of Florida teens in the labor force dropped from 60.7 percent to 42 percent during the same period. Meantime, the percentage of legal and illegal immigrants in the Sunshine State's workforce climbed from 16.5 percent to 23.6 percent.

"At the same time U.S.-born teenagers are working less and less in the summer, many business associations are lobbying Congress to increase the number of immigrants allowed into the country," the CIS report stated.

"It is very difficult to reconcile the perspective of employers who argue that there are not enough seasonal workers with the huge decline in teenage summer employment," the report noted.

"If workers were in short supply, then more teenagers should have been drawn into the labor market, the opposite of what actually happened."

In the 10 occupations employing the most U.S.-born teenagers, one in five workers was an immigrant in the summer of 2007, the latest year for which a breakdown was available.

Read the full report here.