1. Immigrants make up a growing portion of the workforce in Philadelphia and its suburbs<\/p>\n
Immigrants make up a greater percentage of the labor force than their share of the population in Philadelphia and its four collar counties.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cImmigrants across the region are more likely to be in the workforce, and they are substantially younger,\u201d Gupta said.\n<\/p>\n
Statewide, the immigrant workforce has grown by 150% since 1990, while the workforce among native-born workers has remained stable, the report found.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the the problem is that immigrants are like the seeds that then produce a little shoot, and then the plant grows, and then we pick the sweet fruit and we love to eat it, but we don\u2019t think of the seed that produced that,\u201d said Zeke Hernandez, a professor at University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Wharton School of Business, in a panel discussion Tuesday moderated by WHYY\u2019s Cherri Gregg.\n <\/p>\n
![\"Panelists](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/2026-10-06-e-lee-zeke-hernandez-nicole-marcote-saloni-tandon-philadelphia-whyy-report-and-panel-disc.jpeg\")
Panelists (from left) Zeke Hernandez, Nicole Marcote, and Saloni Tandon offer their views on immigration during \u201dExploring Trends: Immigration\u2019s Regional Impact,\u201d a presentation and panel discussion about The Welcoming Center\u2019s latest report hosted by WHYY. (Emma Lee\/WHYY)<\/p>\n
The contributions of immigrants are all the more important in the Pennsylvania workforce, said Saloni Tandon, director of research and analytics at the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia. The commonwealth is an \u201caging state,\u201d she said, with 1 in 5 residents over the age of 65.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThis basically means that these people are going to withdraw from the labor force,\u201d Tandon said. \u201cThey\u2019re going to stop producing the kind of goods and services they were producing, and they also will need different types of services and infrastructure to be able to maintain their standard of life. Now, if you don\u2019t have an addition to the labor force to really balance this out, you\u2019re essentially looking at higher prices, longer wait times in say, service centers, like hospitals. You\u2019re just looking at more pressure in the economy.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
That\u2019s where immigrants have stepped in, Tandon said. Between 2000 and 2024, foreign-born workers fueled 60% of the net population growth in Philadelphia and the four surrounding Pennsylvania counties, she said.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople just look at immigration as this added pressure on an economy, taking away jobs, just adding more stress,\u201d Tandon said. \u201cThat\u2019s not the case. They\u2019re trying to fill a lot of gaps also while creating a lot of value as well.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
She added that immigrants in many industries, including the care economy, also bolster native-born workers\u2019 productivity and ability to do their jobs.\n<\/p>\n
\u201cJust think of it in this hypothetical scenario,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019re looking at a father who needs long-term care at home, right? Because this family is able to get this care at home, the daughter of this father is able to go work the hours she needs to work or wants to work. Her employer is able to benefit from the fact that he is able to retain her, and so is able to benefit from her skills and expertise. The family is able to earn money. This money is then spent in the neighborhood\u00a0 on buying goods and services, which then supports a lot of other businesses.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"1. Immigrants make up a growing portion of the workforce in Philadelphia and its suburbs Immigrants make up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":301099,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,123983,70,123984],"class_list":["post-301098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-immigrant-community","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-the-welcoming-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301098\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/301099"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}