New research from New American Economy underscores the crucial role immigrants in Gainesville play in education, business creation, and STEM innovation. The new report, New Americans in Gainesville, was prepared in partnership with the City of Gainesville and the Rural Women’s Health Project.

The report also features profiles of three Gainesville residents: Saaed Khan, Yennifer Molina, and Jyoti Parmar.

Key Findings

• Immigration is helping drive population growth in Gainesville. Immigrants account for 24.4 percent of the population growth in Gainesville  between 2014 and 2019. Over that time period, Gainesville’s total population grew by 2.8 percent and its immigrant population grew by 6.2 percent. As of 2019, immigrants made up 11.3 percent of the total population.
• Immigrant households support the federal safety net. The foreign-born contributed $33.8 million to Social Security and $8.7 million to Medicare in 2019.
• Immigrants in Gainesville help create or preserve local manufacturing jobs. Because of the role immigrants play in the workforce helping companies keep jobs on U.S. soil, immigrants in the regions helped create or preserve approximately 700 jobs that would have otherwise vanished or moved elsewhere.
• Immigrants are helping the city meet its rising labor in the STEM and education sectors. Despite making up just 11.3 percent of the overall population, immigrants represented 13.2 percent of the employed labor force in Gainesville in 2019. Immigrant residents also made up 23.7 percent of the city’s STEM and 17.5 percent of the city’s education workers.
• Immigrants play a particularly significant role in Gainesville as they are bringing much-needed talent. In 2019, 59.5 percent of the immigrants ages 25 and up held at least a bachelor’s degree, compared with 41.9 percent of the U.S.-born population in Gainesville. About 35.6 percent of the immigrants held an advanced degree, compared with 19.4 percent of the U.S.-born population in the city.

The report was produced as part of NAE’s and Welcoming America’s Gateways for Growth Challenge, which includes tailored research on the local immigrant population and technical assistance in the creation of a multi-sector strategic immigrant integration plan.

Read the full press release here.