Immigrant Workers in November 2022 Up 1.9 Million Over 2019
No evidence of ‘shortfall’ in immigrant workers
By Steven A. Camarota and Karen Zeigler on December 21, 2022
Steven A. Camarota is the director of research and Karen Zeigler is a demographer at the Center.
A good deal of media coverage and commentary has argued that immigration needs to be increased because arrivals slowed during Covid-19 and immigrant workers are now “missing” from the labor market, creating a “shortfall” for the economy. But an analysis of the government data from November of this year shows that there are actually 1.9 million more legal and illegal immigrants working than before the pandemic. (Immigrants are also referred to as the “foreign-born” in government data.)
To the extent workers are “missing”, it is due to the dramatic decline in the labor force participation rate — the share working or looking for work — of the U.S.-born in recent decades as the immigrant population has grown. This decline deprives the economy of workers and contributes to a host of social problems. If the labor force participation rate returned to where it was as recently as 2000, there would be millions more U.S.-born workers in the labor force.
Among the findings:
In November 2022, there were 29.6 million immigrants (legal and illegal together) working in the United States — 1.9 million more than in November 2019, before the pandemic.
The 29.6 million immigrant workers in November of this year was one million above the long-term trend in the pre-Covid growth rate of immigrant workers — immigrant workers are not “missing”.
In contrast to immigrants, there were 2.1 million fewer U.S.-born Americans working in November 2022 than in November 2019, before the pandemic.
There has been a long-term decline in the labor force participation rate — the share of the working-age (16-64) working or looking for work — among U.S.-born Americans, primarily those without a bachelor’s degree. These individuals do not show up as unemployed because they have not looked for work in the last four weeks.
In November of this year, there were 44.9 million working-age U.S.-born Americans not in the labor force — nearly 10 million more than in 2000.
The U.S.-born working-age population has increased in size since 2000, but if their labor force participation rate was what it was in 2000, there would be 6.5 million more Americans in the labor force.
The overall foreign-born:
https://cis.org/Report/Immigrant-Workers-November-2022-19-Million-Over-2019
