Women are playing an increasing role in Mexican immigrant flows to the United States and are becoming more involved in the Mexican immigrant workforce in this country. Unfortunately, relatively little attention has been paid to their post-immigration labor market experiences. This study, based on data from the 1990 Public-Use Microdata Sample (PUMS), focuses on a multilevel analysis of the determinants of employment among married Mexican-origin women who immigrated to the United States in the 1980s. The analytical model incorporates the individual wife's human capital, family household resources, and the areal structural labor market conditions that describe the local labor environment. From this model, nine hypotheses are derived and examined through logistic regression. The results provide support for all but two of the hypotheses.The work force participation of married, Mexican-origin immigrant women who came to the US in the 1980s was investigated. Determinants of employment utilized in this study are the women's human capital stock, household resources, and labor market structural factors. Nine hypotheses were derived from the analytical model and were examined through logistic regression. Findings showed that all human capital resource and structural labor market factors were significantly related to employment. On the other hand, four of the five family household factors namely: the age and presence of children in the household, husband's income, husband's employment, and non-labor income were significantly related to employment. Furthermore, the positive factors indicating the likelihood of being employed in 1989 for Mexican immigrant wives are: 1) being 25-54 years of age; 2) higher educational levels; 3) speaking fluent English; 4) lower levels of husband's income and non-labor income; 5) employment of husband in 1989; 6) absence of children under age 6 at home; 7) lower non-Hispanic female unemployment rates; 8) higher work force proportion employed in immigrant female-dependent occupations; 9) lower proportions of the Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) population being of Mexican origin; and 10) smaller MSA populations.

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employment United States womens status labor participation immigrant population