Beyond English Proficiency: Employment Outcomes Among Central and West African Immigrants in the United States

Research on African immigrants often aggregates national-origin groups, obscuring differences in language background and employment. Drawing on 2018–2022 IPUMS USA American Community Survey data (n = 17,906), this study examines employment, compared with unemployment or non-participation, among immigrants from Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Republic of Congo, Ghana, and Nigeria. Binary logistic regression and predicted-probability analyses are used to investigate whether English proficiency and country of origin are associated with employment after accounting for education, age, sex, citizenship, marital status, and duration of residence in the United States. Country-of-origin differences were attenuated after adjustment and were not statistically significant in the fully adjusted model. Respondents who spoke only English at home had lower adjusted odds of employment than those who spoke another language at home and reported speaking English very well. The other English-language contrasts were not statistically significant. These findings do not establish a graded proficiency advantage or identify the effects of colonial-linguistic history, discrimination, or institutional recognition. The study demonstrates the importance of disaggregating African immigrant populations while avoiding deterministic interpretations of either colonial language background or culture.