President Joe Biden’s use of mass immigration to inflate the nation’s labor market comes as more than 44 million working age Americans are out of the workforce altogether, not including those counted as unemployed, data reveals.
The labor data, published on August 21 by Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler at the Center for Immigration Studies, shows that while Biden adds millions of legal immigrants and illegal aliens to the United States population who now hold jobs, working age Americans — especially those among the working class — are falling out of the workforce at an alarming pace.
As of April, the number of American-born men and women from 16 to 64 years old who are not in the workforce at all stands at 44.3 million — almost ten million more than the year 2000, when 34.4 million were not in the workforce.
That figure, though, does not include the millions of United States-born men and women who are considered unemployed.
Chart via the Center for Immigration Studies
For six decades, the labor force participation rate among American men has been dramatically declining.
In 1960, for example, the share of United States-born men from 16 to 64 years old in the workforce was 88.7 percent. In 2000, it had dropped to 83.7 percent and by April 2023 it stood at 77.5 percent. If the same share of these men were in the labor force today as were in 1960, there would be another 9.5 million American-born men for hire.
Among working-class men, the drop is even steeper.
From 1960 to 2023, the labor participation rate among men without a bachelor’s degree declined by nearly 17 percentage points.
Camarota and Zeigler write:
This is relevant to the immigration debate because one of the arguments for allowing in so many legal immigrants, or even tolerating illegal immigration, is that the low unemployment rate, along with the aging of the U.S. population, means there are not enough workers. But this ignores the enormous increase in the number of working-age people not in the labor force who do not show up as unemployed because they are not actively looking for work.
Chart via the Center for Immigration Studies
As Breitbart News reported in May, the Biden administration has brought in so many legal immigrants and illegal aliens that foreign workers now account for the largest share of United States job holders since the numbers have been tracked.
In 2022, foreign workers saw their share of the labor market hit the highest level in almost 30 years at more than 18 percent, with close to 30 million now holding U.S. jobs.
“Policy-makers should consider encouraging work among the millions on the economic sidelines rather than ignoring the problem and continuing to allow in large numbers of immigrants,” Camarota and Zeigler write.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at
