“government data show immigrant labor contributes to economic growth and provides promotional opportunities for native-born workers. And a mass deportation event would cost U.S. taxpayers up to a trillion dollars and could cause the cost of living, including food and housing, to skyrocket, economists say.”
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“The latest U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey data shows that as of 2023, native-born Black workers are most predominantly employed in management and financial operations, sales and office support roles, while native-born Latino workers are most often employed in management, office support, sales and service occupations.
Foreign-born, noncitizen Black workers are most often represented in transportation and health care support roles, and foreign-born, noncitizen Hispanic workers are most often represented in construction, building and grounds cleaning.
How has immigration contributed to U.S. growth?
In 2023, international migrants — primarily from Latin America — accounted for more than two-thirds of the population growth in the United States, and so far this decade they have made up almost three-quarters of U.S. growth.
After hitting a record high in December 2023, the number of migrants crossing the border has plummeted.
The claim that immigrants are taking employment opportunities from native-born Americans is repeated by Trump’s advisers. They often cite a report produced by Steven Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies, a right-leaning think tank that seeks a reduced immigration flow into the U.S. The report combines job numbers for immigrants in the U.S. legally and illegally to reinforce the claim that foreigners are disproportionately driving U.S. labor growth and reaping most of the benefits.
Camarota’s report states that 971,000 more U.S.-born Americans were employed in May 2024 compared to May 2019, prior to the pandemic, while the number of employed immigrants has increased by 3.2 million.
It is true that international migrants have become a primary driver of population growth this decade, increasing their share of the overall population as fewer children are being born in the U.S. compared with years past. That’s according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey.
Are immigrants taking native-born workers’ jobs?
Economists who study immigrant labor’s impact on the economy say that people who are in the U.S. illegally are not taking native citizens’ jobs, because the roles that these immigrant workers take on are most often positions that native workers are unwilling to fill, such as agriculture and food processing jobs.
Giovanni Peri, a labor economist at the University of California, Davis, conducted research that explores the impact of the 1980 influx of Cuban immigrants in Miami (the so-called Mariel Boatlift) on Black workers’ employment. The study determined that the wages of Miami’s Black and Hispanic workers moved above those in other cities that did not have a surge of immigrant workers.
Peri told the AP that the presence of new immigrant labor often improves employment outcomes for native-born workers, who often have different language and skill sets compared to new immigrants.
In addition, there are not a fixed number of jobs in the U.S., immigrants tend to contribute to the survival of existing firms (opening up new opportunities for native workers) and there are currently more jobs available than there are workers available to take them. U.S. natives have low interest in working in labor-intensive agriculture and food production roles.
“We have many more vacancies than workers in this type of manual labor, in fact we need many more of them to fill these roles,” Peri said.
Stan Marek, who employs roughly 1,000 workers at his Houston construction firm, Marek Brothers Holdings LLC, said he has seen this firsthand.
Asked if immigrants in the U.S. illegally are taking jobs from native-born workers, he said, “Absolutely not, unequivocally.”
“Many of my workers are retiring, and their kids are not going to come into construction and the trades,” Marek said. He added that the U.S. needs an identification system that addresses national security concerns so those who are in the country illegally can work.
“There’s not enough blue-collar labor here,” he said.
Data also shows when there are not enough workers to fill these roles, firms will automate their jobs with machines and technology investments, rather than turn to native workers.”
“it’s misleading to suggest that the president—and by extension, the major political party to which the president belongs—is singularly or even primarily responsible for the success or failure of the job market. Rather, individuals in dynamic economies operate independently of the political party that happens to occupy the White House.
Clinton’s numbers are technically right: According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy added 2.63 million nonfarm private sector jobs while George H.W. Bush was president. During Clinton’s two terms, the economy added 22.9 million jobs. Only 1.37 million jobs were added during George W. Bush’s terms, with another 11.57 million during Barack Obama’s tenure. During Donald Trump’s single term, the economy lost 2.72 million jobs, and in Joe Biden’s term through July 2024, the economy has added 15.81 million.
In total, that equals 51.56 million net jobs added since January 1989—50.28 million under Democratic presidents and 1.28 million under Republican presidents. That’s not the whole story, though.
Many of the presidents’ terms coincided with substantial external forces. Trump left office during a recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic: In his first three years in office, the economy actually added 6.4 million jobs. Similarly, George W. Bush left office amid the Great Recession, during which the economy shed nearly 7.4 million jobs. Calculating Bush’s term up to December 2007, the economy added 5.7 million jobs.
On the other hand, Clinton served during the dot-com boom. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite more than doubled between January 1999 and March 2000. But then the bubble burst: The economy entered a recession in March 2001, just weeks after Clinton left office, and the Nasdaq would lose 78 percent of its value between its March 2000 high and October 2002.”
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“National economies—particularly those as large and complex as ours—are dynamic, with an infinite number of inputs and externalities. “Month-to-month job creation is just a function of the dynamic U.S. economy that’s bigger than one person,” Chris Douglas, associate economics professor at the University of Michigan–Flint, told Marketplace in 2022. Central planning fails for this reason: Dynamic economies are driven by individuals, each operating only with his or her own knowledge and interests in mind.”
“Fears have ticked up since Friday because the unemployment rate has risen enough in the past year to trigger a statistical threshold, known as the Sahm rule, that has historically been a sign that we’re in the early stages of recession.
But the U.S. economy actually still looks fine: Joblessness is at 4.3 percent, which is only bad by comparison to 3.4 percent, where it stood in early 2023. A higher percentage of people in their prime working years are employed than at any point since 2001, and the unemployment rate — which measures the number of people looking to be employed against the total number of people participating in the labor force — has risen largely because more people are seeking work, including immigrants.
U.S. GDP grew at a 2.8 percent pace in the second quarter of the year, which is faster than would be expected, especially given how high interest rates are. (Recessions are associated with an economy that is contracting, not expanding.)
Claudia Sahm, the creator of the Sahm rule, said that she doesn’t think we’re in a recession and that this time her rule might not hold.
But one thing seems clear: The economy is now slowing. The question is how much and how fast.”
“Last September, California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) signed a bill mandating a $20 minimum wage for fast food workers. The new wage is among the highest in the county, surpassing even Washington, D.C.’s $17.50 minimum wage. While supporters touted the wage increase as a way to help struggling Californians, detractors warned that restaurant owners would respond by laying off workers, cutting their hours, or speeding up the already starting shift to automation.
The law went into effect in April, meaning that it’s likely too early to tell what the ultimate effects of the law will be. However, a recent report from the Associated Press detailed concerns from several California fast food restaurant owners who say they’ve been forced to reduce hours and hike food prices.
“We kind of just cut where we can,” Lawrence Cheng, whose family owns several Wendy’s franchises told the A.P. “I schedule one less person, and then I come in for that time that I didn’t schedule and I work that hour.”
Juancarlos Chacon, who owns nine Jersey Mikes locations in Los Angeles told the A.P. that he’s resorted to reducing staff, cutting his part-time workers by about 20 employees. He’s also had to raise prices. A turkey sub, for example, that used to be under $10 now costs $11.15. As a result, the amount customers spend, he says, has been falling.
“I’ve been in the business for 25 years and two different brands and I never had to increase the amount of pricing that I did this past time in April,” he told the A.P.”
“Many supporters of weakening child labor standards argue that they’re simply making it easier for kids looking for work to land jobs. They also argue that current child labor laws create too many obstacles for employers to hire workers.
But by proposing to expand the types of industries kids can work in or to eliminate the youth minimum wage — which the federal government and many states already set as lower than the standard minimum wage — it’s clear that states curtailing child labor protections are, at least in part, engaging in an effort to make cheap labor more available for businesses at a time when a tight labor market is driving wages up, including for young workers. It’s not a coincidence that so many industry groups have lobbied for rolling back basic child labor protections.
These changes in standards have coincided with a rise in child labor violations by companies across the United States. In a New York Times exposé last year, the journalist Hannah Dreier uncovered the various ways migrant children have been exploited in brutal working conditions that all too often lead to serious injuries. And she found at least 12 cases of migrant children being killed on the job.
“The deaths include a 14-year-old food delivery worker who was hit by a car while on his bike at a Brooklyn intersection; a 16-year-old who was crushed under a 35-ton tractor-scraper outside Atlanta; and a 15-year-old who fell 50 feet from a roof in Alabama where he was laying down shingles,” Dreier wrote.
There’s a stark contrast between the often privileged kids who take a job scooping ice cream or lifeguarding the neighborhood pool for a few months and the migrant and often poor kids working dangerous jobs or ungodly hours. And the weakening of child labor laws has little, if anything, to do with encouraging the former.
“There’s often a disconnect, especially when in states where these lawmakers are proposing rollbacks, where they sort of describe this workforce as if it’s like teens who just want to earn a little bit of extra pocket change and work in movie theaters. Those are the same youth they bring to the hearings to talk about how meaningful and fun it is to work in these jobs,” said Nina Mast, an analyst at the Economic Policy Institute who focuses on child labor standards. “They’re always ignoring the reality that a lot of the most dangerous and difficult jobs are being done by migrant youth or other marginalized young people who are not being represented in these conversations.”
That means that lower-income and marginalized kids who might work to supplement their families’ incomes are entering a labor force with eroding standards.
That could eventually lead to even more disparities: Teens who work more than 20 hours a week tend to perform worse academically than kids who don’t have jobs, in part because they have less time to dedicate to schoolwork, which ultimately impacts their educational trajectory and prospects for higher-paying jobs later in life.
The effort to weaken child labor protections, in other words, helps to “create this permanent underclass of workers,” Mast said.”
“if you artificially hike the price of labor, you reduce demand for workers. In California, this is playing out in terms of lost jobs, increased automation, and other consequences that result when politicians signal a unicorns-and-rainbows vision of the marketplace to their allies and leave the public to deal with the resulting mess.”
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“”A California state law is set to raise fast-food workers’ wages in April to $20 an hour. Some restaurants there are already laying off staff and reducing hours for workers as they try to cut costs,” Heather Haddon reported for The Wall Street Journal. “California restaurants, particularly pizza joints, have outlined plans to cut hundreds of jobs in the months leading up to the April 1 wage mandate, according to state records. Other operators said they have halted hiring or are scaling back workers’ hours.”
This comes after California Pizza Hut franchisees laid off over 1,200 delivery drivers in anticipation of the minimum wage hike. It comes in the wake of McDonald’s and Chipotle Mexican Grill announcing higher menu prices to accommodate labor costs; those higher prices can be expected to drive away some customers, resulting in less need for workers to service lower demand.”
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“less customer traffic isn’t the only way to reduce staffing needs; you can also replace people with technology. Chipotle announced plans to use robots to assemble burrito bowls. El Pollo Loco is doing the same for making salsa. Other restaurants are adopting automated fryers and burger-flippers to reduce the costs of employees.”
“Today, Amazon terminated its planned acquisition of iRobot, manufacturer of Roomba robot vacuums, as the companies saw “no path to regulatory approval.” iRobot then announced that it would be cutting nearly one-third of its work force.
While the companies blamed regulators in the European Union for the termination, meddlesome U.S. lawmakers played their own part in souring the deal.”
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“as the companies waited on regulators, iRobot was losing money: The company took out a $200 million bridge loan in July 2023 to tie it over until the deal closed (at which point Amazon lowered its offer to account for the new debt). With the deal scuttled, Amazon will now pay a $94 million termination fee, but iRobot expects to report an operating loss of as much as $285 million for 2023.
It’s worth wondering, then, if this is what lawmakers like Warren had in mind. The FTC letter worried the merger “could harm consumers and reduce competition and innovation in the home robotics market.” But without the merger, iRobot could very well face insolvency, and nearly one-third of its work force will lose their jobs—and considering the company is based in Massachusetts, a substantial number of them may very well be Warren’s constituents.”
“California’s attempt at forcing gig workers to become traditional employees backfired by driving many of those workers out of their jobs.
In the wake of a new law (Assembly Bill 5) that was intended to reclassify many independent contractors as regular employees, self-employment in California fell by 10.5 percent and overall employment tumbled by 4.4 percent, according to a study released Thursday by the Mercatus Center, a free market think tank housed at George Mason University. In professions where self-employment was more common, the effects were more dramatic, and in some fields employment declined by as much as 28 percent after A.B. 5’s implementation.”
“Companies rushed to break ground on new factories in hopes of winning those federal incentives, driving industry spending on construction to record heights. And politically, Democratic advisers said, the building frenzy provides signs of progress that Biden can point to in nearly every state.
“By the end of the election, every voter in battleground states is going to hear this story about what he’s done to invest in America’s economic future,” said John Anzalone, the founder of Impact Research and a longtime Biden pollster. “That is just not a message that Trump has.”
Yet central to Biden’s story of a manufacturing comeback is the prospect of thousands of new jobs spurred by his new laws — and so far, those have been slow to materialize. While Biden often touts the nearly 800,000 manufacturing jobs created during his presidency, the vast majority came prior to passage of the IRA and CHIPS, when Americans’ surging demand for goods during the pandemic drove a rapid industry recovery.
Since then, hiring has stalled as the economy evened out, with manufacturing-centric swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania actually losing factory jobs in 2023.
Those conditions have left Biden selling a manufacturing jobs boom that may not arrive in full force until well after November. Most companies that broke ground after Biden’s economic bills became law in August 2022 won’t have their new plants up and running until later this year — at the earliest. In high-profile setbacks for the White House, chipmakers TSMC and Intel have both signaled plans to delay production at their newest U.S. factories until 2025.”
“A new California law will require that most food-service workers get paid at least $20 per hour starting next year.
But hundreds of pizza delivery drivers in the Los Angeles area are about to discover Thomas Sowell’s famous adage that the true minimum wage is zero.
Pizza Hut announced Wednesday that it would lay off about 1,200 delivery drivers in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside counties, CBS News reported. Pizza Hut franchises are outsourcing delivery to third-party apps like GrubHub and UberEats as a cost-saving measure in advance of the new law taking effect.”