Employers — especially construction employers — will be interested in new data the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics published May 18 on the role of foreign-born persons in the U.S. workforce (people currently working in the United States who were born outside the U.S. and neither parent was a U.S. citizen).

These workers include both legal and undocumented immigrants. They accounted for almost 60 percent of the growth in the U.S. labor force last year. Foreign-born men continue to participate in the labor force at a considerably higher rate (77.4 percent) than their native-born counterparts (66 percent). Foreign-born men are also far more likely to work in construction, maintenance and natural resource extraction occupations than native-born men (22.6 percent versus 14.4 percent).