Workforce – Dr. Rich Swier

President Donald Trump’s mass deportation program is already having an effect on the job market, with gains going to Americans rather than foreign-born workers. The U.S. Department of Labor announced this month that “native-born workers have accounted for ALL job gains since January.”

In a recent podcast, economics editor and attorney John Carney explained that net job growth under the Biden administration went to foreign-born workers, but the Trump administration has reversed that trend. “When you are adding up all the people who gained and all the people who lost, the net increase in jobs is going to Americans,” Carney said. He continued, “Whereas, during the Biden administration, you had fewer Americans being employed every month and more foreigners being employed. So the net gain was all going to foreign workers, to migrants of some sort or another.”

“Now it’s going to Americans,” the veteran economics writer observed. He continued, “It’s going to native-born Americans. That’s actually quite interesting, too: it’s not just going to people who are legal residents of the United States, it’s actually going to … American-born people.” Carney added, “This is very important, again, because that’s fundamentally who the country is supposed to work for, for the people we have here. And it is working for them again, for us again.”

Carney further explained that wage growth is rising as more job growth goes to Americans. “One of the reasons wage growth gets bad is when businesses believe that they can just import new workers. They don’t give people raises because they say, ‘You know what? I’ve got more workers in the pipeline. I can just draw people over the border,’” he said. “So, without that, they have to start bidding against each other, basically a competitive bidding war for American workers. And that’s what we’re seeing in the wage gains.” Carney noted that “the wage numbers are now outpacing inflation, which is, again, the reverse of what we saw under Biden, where inflation consistently outpaced wage gains.”

Even Wendy Edelberg, a senior fellow in economic studies at the left-of-center Brookings Institution, admitted in an interview that mass deportations will drive up American earnings. “As a result of this immigration policy, we will have negative net migration, which is to say more people leaving the country than entering the country this year for the first time in many decades,” she observed. “We’re going to see stronger wage growth in some occupations, stronger wage growth in the agricultural sector, stronger wage growth for home health workers” due to the decreased share of foreign-born workers.

E.J. Antoni, chief economist at the Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, told The Washington Stand, “Political pundits and commentators seem to forget that the labor market is a market, with outcomes determined by supply and demand. Mass deportations will include some unskilled labor, reducing the supply, and therefore putting upward pressure on price, which we call wages.” Antoni continued, “Again, these are simple market dynamics that apply everywhere, but people often pretend the labor market is somehow exempt from the laws of economics.” He added, “Of course, many illegal aliens aren’t working at all, so they’re not participating in the labor market and removing them from the country has no direct effect on the wage rate for unskilled labor.”

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports have demonstrated that, under the Biden administration, nearly 90% of job growth went to immigrants, not to Americans, with an estimated 60% of new jobs going to illegal immigrants. The Trump administration’s deportation raids have inspired many illegal immigrants to voluntarily leave the workforce in the U.S. and self-deport, resulting in measurably higher wages for Americans in blue-collar jobs.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Unprecedented levels of immigration are reshaping the foundation of the U.S. economy, the American labor force, according to a recent analysis. Writing for The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, economics reporter Paul Kiernan stated, “Immigrants are swelling the population and changing the makeup of the U.S. labor force in ways that are likely to reverberate through the economy for decades.”

Kiernan explained that at least nine million immigrants have come to the U.S. since the end of 2020 and are still here — both legally and illegally. “That’s nearly as many as the number that came in the previous decade,” Kiernan wrote of the immigrants remaining in the U.S. Less than 30% of those entered and currently remain in the U.S. legally, Kiernan reported.

Noting the declining birth rate among U.S. citizens, Kiernan pointed out that the immigrants who have entered the U.S. over the past four years are “younger and more likely to be of working age than U.S.-born Americans.” He wrote, “Of foreigners who arrived since 2020, 78% are between the ages of 16 and 64, compared with 60% of those born in the U.S., according to the monthly census data.” The WSJ reporter continued, “Of recent immigrants age 16 or older, 68% — the participation rate — are either working or looking for a job, compared with 62% for U.S.-born Americans. In raw numbers, that likely amounts to more than five million people, equal to roughly 3% of the labor force.” Kiernan also anticipated that the rate of immigrants seeking and claiming jobs in the U.S. “is likely to climb further in coming years.”

While border states are, naturally, heavily impacted by immigration (especially illegal immigration), Kiernan observes that the top five “destination states” for illegal immigrants are Florida, Texas, California, New York, and New Jersey.

Prior reports have placed the numbers of immigrants in the U.S. workforce much higher than WSJ’s estimates. As The Washington Stand previously reported, a new study shows that a staggering 30 million immigrants — again, both legal and illegal — have entered the U.S. labor force just since 2022. While just over 22 million of those immigrants are in the U.S. legally, over eight million are working and living in the U.S. illegally.

Robert Law, the director of Regulatory Affairs and Policy for the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), told TWS at the time, “The Biden-Harris administration’s border security and economic policies have significantly harmed the wages, economic opportunities, and security of the American people.” He explained that jobs being taken by immigrants “are not jobs Americans won’t do.” Instead, he suggested that Americans “are being sidelined by administration policies that put American workers last.”

Immigration (again, especially of the illegal variety) has been linked to skyrocketing violent crime and a worsening drug crisis, in addition to the suffering job market. Election integrity has also become a point of concern, as Republicans move to ensure that only U.S. citizens are permitted to vote. Numerous Democrat-led cities and states are expected to spend millions and, in some cases, billions of dollars on housing illegal immigrants and providing them with health care and other related benefits.

Americans are increasingly unhappy with the state of immigration in the U.S. under incumbent President Joe Biden and his deputy, Vice President Kamala Harris. For example, 84% of Americans ranked illegal immigration a “serious” issue, including 61% who ranked it “very serious.” In fact, immigration has consistently been ranked as the second-most-pressing issue facing voters ahead of November’s election, immediately behind inflation and the economy. Continuing reports, like Kiernan’s in WSJ, suggest that the two issues are closely related.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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Reports Warn Exponential Immigration Reshaping U.S. Labor Force

S.A. McCarthy