The unemployment rate for foreign-born workers in the U.S. fell to 5.6% in 2014 from 6.9% in 2013, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday, reflecting the overall firming up of the labor market last year.

The unemployment rate for the native-born fell to 6.3% last year from 7.5% in 2013.

Since 2009, when the national unemployment rate peaked, joblessness among foreign-born workers has fallen by 4.1 percentage points. The drop was 2.9 percentage points for the native born.

The report is compiled annually from the Current Population Survey. Foreign-born workers are those living in the U.S. who were not U.S. citizens at birth and who were born outside the country to parents who were not themselves U.S. citizens, according to the BLS.

The number of foreign-born workers kept rising. Last year, there were 25.7 million in the U.S., up from 25.3 million in 2013. They accounted for 16.5% of the labor force in 2014, up from 16.3% the year before and 15.5% in 2009, the year the recovery began.