The Filipino immigrant population
The Migration Policy Institute issued a report this fall on Filipino immigrants. Not surprisingly, the percentage of Filipino immigrant workers who work as nurses is 15%, vastly higher than the percentage of nurses in the entire domestic workforce (about 3 million out of 130 million. By and large, Filipinos often trail behind Mexicans in terms of most in immigrant categories. but they are much more educated than Mexicans. More facts are below.
The number of Filipino immigrants in the United States tripled between 1980 and 2006, from 501,440 to 1.6 million, making them the second largest immigrant group in the United States after Mexican immigrants and ahead of the Chinese, Indian, and Vietnamese foreign born. They are second behind Mexicans in the number of lawful permanent residents (540,000 out of 12.1 million).
Thumbnails: Filipino immigrant women outnumbered men by about three to two in 2006. The majority of Filipino immigrants were naturalized US citizens in 2006. About one-third of Filipino immigrants in 2006 were limited English proficient. Nearly half of Filipino foreign-born adults had a bachelor's or higher degree. Almost one-third of employed Filipino-born women had health-care and related occupations.
More highly educated: In 2006, 49.6 percent of the 1.4 Filipino-born adults age 25 and older had a bachelor's degree or higher compared to 26.7 percent among the 30.9 million foreign-born adults.
On the other end of the education continuum, about 8.9 percent of Filipino immigrants had no high school diploma or the equivalent General Education Diploma (GED), compared to 32.0 percent among all foreign-born adults. About 14.8 percent had a high school diploma or GED compared to 23.8 percent among all foreign-born adults.
Healthcare employment: Among female Filipino-born workers, 15.0 percent reported working as registered nurses, 6.6 percent reported working as other health-care practitioners, 6.6 percent reported working in health-care support occupations, and 1.3 percent reported working as physicians. Compared to other immigrants, Filipino-born male workers age 16 and older employed in the civilian labor force were also more likely to report working in health-care and related occupations.
Filipino immigrants also have the highest percentage of all immigrant nationalities serving or having served in the military.