Economists are expressing concern over the increasing number of illegal immigrants in the United States, who they believe are obscuring the actual condition of the jobs market and the U.S. economy.
For the last few years, the headline employment figure has been impressive. The country has recovered the lost jobs from the government-imposed shutdowns during the pandemic and added a few million more, despite a climate of high inflation and rising interest rates.
In 2023, the economy added approximately 3 million new positions. To kick off 2024, more than 800,000 new jobs have been added.
The labor market data is critical as it helps determine the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policy.
Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell said on March 20 that the central bank is monitoring the labor market “very carefully” and isn’t observing any “cracks.”
“We follow all the possible stories that are out there about there being cracks, but the overall picture, really, is a strong labor market,” he noted. “Things are returning more to their state in 2019.”
However, a closer look at the household survey of the employment report reveals a more gloomy picture. Employment for native-born Americans has been in decline over the past four years. This means that all of the job gains have gone to foreign-born workers, including both legal and illegal immigrants.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the number of immigrants—legal and illegal—working in the United States grew by 3.4 million between February 2020, shortly before the onset of COVID-19, and February 2024. The number of U.S.-born workers, however, declined by 78,000 during the same period.
In addition, during the Biden administration, there have been approximately twice as many illegal immigrants as legal immigrants entering the country, according to a study by the Brookings Institution.
“That’s a big problem,” says economist Stephen Moore.
“What we’re interested in is how the economy is working for American citizens. So, we’re distorting the jobs market with all of the illegal immigrants,” he told The Epoch Times.
Mr. Moore, who served as an economic adviser to former President Donald Trump, criticized the Biden administration for turning the U.S. immigration system “upside down.”
He argued that the U.S. economy “desperately needs” more legal immigrants, who possess high skill levels or special talents, rather than illegal immigrants, who tend to be less educated.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the number of immigrants—legal and illegal—working in the United States grew by 3.4 million between February 2020, shortly before the onset of COVID-19, and February 2024. The number of US-born workers, however, declined by 78,000 during the same period.
‘Very Troubling’
The BLS includes illegal immigrants in the labor statistics, identifying them as “undocumented workers.” However, the agency doesn’t disclose the data publicly and instead groups legal and illegal immigrant job data together.
Many economists have been surprised by the growing employment gap between native- and foreign-born workers since October 2019.
The contrast in the past year is even more striking. According to the BLS, native-born employment fell by 651,000 in March 2024 from the same period last year, while foreign-born employment climbed by nearly 1.3 million.
According to Steven Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), it is hard to know the exact number of illegal immigrants who have recently entered the country and found employment.
However, he estimates roughly half of the job gains among foreign-born workers have gone to illegal immigrants over the last year.
Mr. Camarota notes that the government should know all economic activity and job creation in America, so counting illegal immigrants is not a problem.
“What I do think is problematic is that you can see a low unemployment rate and more importantly, lots of job growth, but almost all the job growth is going to the immigrants. That’s the distortion,” he told The Epoch Times.
There were a total of 31 million immigrant workers as of March 2024, constituting nearly 20 percent of the U.S. labor force. Mr. Camarota estimates that at the beginning of this year, roughly 9 million of these workers were illegally present.
The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the number of “immigrants with a nonlegal or pending status” increased by 2.4 million in 2023.
This group includes individuals who have been apprehended and released into the country, individuals who have managed to evade the Border Patrol, officially known as “gotaways,” and individuals who have overstayed their visas. The figure is modified to account for deaths, legalizations, and departures.
According to Mr. Camarota, the rise in illegal employment conceals the true state of the U.S. jobs market. There has been a concerning decline in the labor force participation of U.S.-born working-age men from the 1960s to the present. And this decline is more pronounced among the less educated.
Globalization, outsourcing of jobs overseas, generous welfare and disability policies, and wage stagnation are among the factors that have contributed to this drop over the years, Mr. Camarota said.
“That decline in labor force participation, particularly among U.S.-born men, is linked to many social problems, from overdose deaths to crime,” he said.
Hence, he argued that the government is missing the overall picture by focusing on headline data and reporting strong job growth, and not saying it’s fueled primarily by low-wage illegal immigrants.
“That’s very troubling,” he said.
Another issue with more illegal immigration is that it drives down wages for American workers.
According to EJ Antoni, an economist and research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, one of the key reasons President Joe Biden is polling so poorly among voters is “because they are not the ones getting the jobs.”
As a result of the flood of cheap labor, American workers also earn less than they would otherwise, he told The Epoch Times.
The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank, rejects the notion that illegal immigrants are hurting U.S.-born workers.
Experts Heidi Shierholz and Daniel Costa at the Institute wrote in a recent report that “the idea that immigrants are making things worse for U.S.-born workers is wrong.”
“The reality is that the labor market is absorbing immigrants at a rapid pace, while simultaneously maintaining record-low unemployment for U.S.-born workers,” they stated.
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