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With micro data from the US Census for 1980 and 1990, we document the growth of recent immigrants across New York metropolitan area job structure and test for the effects of recent immigrants on mean job earnings for native-born white, black and Hispanic male workers. During the 1980s foreign-born workers increased from 31 to almost 50 per cent of all workers in 'secondary' jobs, the lowest paying jobs that employ about one-third of the region's workforce. While employment trends for nativeborn minorities and recent immigrants were positively related among the best professional, managerial and technical jobs in the 1980s, there is evidence of replacement for all three native-born groups in the less skilled (subordinate primary and secondary) parts of the metropolitan job structure. We find negative effects of the growth in recent immigrant share of job employment on the change in earnings for white and black native-born groups, but little or no overall effect on Hispanic workers or recent immigrants themselves. Downward wage effects were strongest in secondary jobs for black men and among good blue-collar jobs (subordinate primary) jobs for Hispanic men. Among the best jobs, recent immigrants show higher wage growth where their employment growth was fastest, suggested a positive 'niche' effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]