Large-scale immigration allows us to ignore the deterioration in labor-force participation.
Large-scale immigration allows us to ignore the deterioration in labor-force participation.
F ormer president Donald Trump wrote in an August 20 post on Truth Social that “most new jobs under Biden went to illegal immigrants.” Predictably, “fact checkers” attacked his assertion. It is the case that a significant share of job growth went to the native-born in 2021 as the economy recovered from Covid. But Trump is probably right if we focus on the past two years. Furthermore, the current low unemployment rate does not include the millions of working-age Americans who have dropped out of the labor force entirely. The massive influx of foreign workers in recent decades allows us to ignore these Americans and the enormous social problems this situation creates.
The government’s Current Population Survey (CPS) asks members of the general public each month whether they are working, looking for work (unemployed), or neither working nor looking for work. That last category is referred to as “not in the labor force.”
The CPS collects a wide array of demographic information, including citizenship and country of birth, along with age, race, sex, education level, and occupation. The foreign-born, often colloquially called “immigrants,” are all those who were not American citizens at birth — including naturalized citizens, permanent residents (green-card holders), temporary visitors (mostly guest workers and foreign students), and illegal immigrants. The Census Bureau, which collects the CPS, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which analyzes the data each month, are both clear that illegal immigrants are included in the data.
In a series of reports, we have chronicled the dramatic growth of the foreign-born in the monthly CPS since President Biden took office. It is possible that some of the growth in 2021 is overstated owing to problems with collecting the survey during the pandemic. However, between July 2022 and July 2024, the total foreign-born in the CPS increased by 3.9 million, and there can be little doubt that the observed increase is real.
The increase in the foreign-born is a net increase. The number of new arrivals is actually much higher — perhaps 6 million since mid 2022. New arrivals are offset by natural mortality among the existing immigrant population, which was about 600,000 in the past two years, and outmigration of at least 1.5 million over this time period. The headline-grabbing number of border encounters is not a measure of new illegal immigration, because the same person can be counted more than once trying to enter and because a significant percentage of those caught at the border are expelled.
We have estimated that roughly 60 percent of the net increase in the total foreign-born in the CPS is from illegal immigration. How do we know this? We have a good idea of how many legal immigrants enter each year. Combining this with other administrative data, and making reasonable estimates of emigration and deaths, allows us to estimate the number of legal immigrants that should be in the country.
If we subtract the legal population from the total foreign-born in the CPS, we get a baseline number of illegal immigrants of 13 to 14 million in 2024. The actual illegal population is almost certainly larger, but the undercount in the CPS of illegal immigrants is likely “only” 1 million to 2 million. We can estimate the undercount based on research that tries to measure how many immigrants are missed in Census Bureau data, and by comparing what the survey shows to administrative data such as school enrollment and birth records. It is extremely unlikely that the illegal population is 20–30 million as some people argue.
But what about jobs? Comparing the employment of the foreign-born in July 2024 with what it was in July 2022 shows a net increase of 2.32 million immigrants working. This is significantly less than the 3.9 million total increase in the foreign-born over this same time period because some immigrants are unemployed; others are too old or too young to work; still others are disabled, or are taking care of young children, or simply do not wish to work. Immigrants are not just workers, they are people, which is something advocates for more immigration seem to forget.
While the CPS shows that the number of immigrants working is up 2.32 million in the past two years, the number of U.S.-born people employed is up just 653,000. Thus, an astonishing 78 percent of the total net increase in employment went to immigrants from July 2022 to July 2024. As already discussed, illegal immigrants account for some 60 percent of the increase in the total foreign-born. Among workers it is more likely 65 percent. This means that slightly more than half of total employment growth went to illegal immigrants. Of course, the inherent difficulty of estimating illegal immigration makes it possible that somewhat less than half of employment growth went to illegal immigrants. But even if that is the case, there is still no question that Trump’s basic point that illegal immigrants are among the primary beneficiaries of job growth is correct.
There are two main caveats about the above estimate. The first is that the CPS measures the number of people employed, not the number of jobs. The two concepts are closely related, but they are not the same thing, mainly because one person can have more than one job. The second caveat is technical. Like all modern surveys, the CPS is weighted to reflect the size and composition of the U.S. population. The accuracy of the survey depends on the accuracy of the weights. The recent immigrant influx has increased uncertainty about the ability of the Census Bureau to properly weight the data to reflect the influx. But to the extent illegal immigrants are undercounted in the data, it means they represent a larger share of employment growth.
Of course, many argue that the dramatic increase in illegal immigration is not a problem because we need the workers. Putting aside the massive lawlessness this situation creates, as well as the fiscal costs and the implications for public safety and national security, it is still the case that the pool of potential American workers is very large.
As noted above, the low unemployment rate includes only those who have looked for a job in the past four weeks. The share of working-age, native-born Americans not in the labor force — neither working nor looking for work — has increased dramatically, particularly among men without a bachelor’s degree. While labor-force participation is now roughly what it was before the pandemic, the share of working-age Americans not in the labor force remains near historic highs. There are roughly 42 million native-born men and women ages 16 to 64 not in the labor force, as well as several million more unemployed, excluding inmates.
Even among prime-age men (25 to 54), traditionally the group most likely to work, things have deteriorated significantly for the less educated. In 1960, just 4 percent of these men without a bachelor’s were not in the labor force, compared with 11 percent in 2000 and 15 percent in 2024.
Some will still argue that if lazy Americans won’t work, then we should let in immigrants who will. But this ignores our obligations to our fellow Americans, even if some of them have made poor choices in life. Moreover, there is substantial evidence that the deterioration in labor-force participation among non-college men, and to some extent less-educated women too, is contributing to profound social problems that affect all of us, from crime and drug addiction to welfare dependency and social alienation.
Addressing this problem should be a top priority. It will involve the difficult task of reforming our welfare and disability systems, as well as re-instilling the value of work among young people. Allowing wages to rise, partly by reducing immigration, would certainly make jobs more attractive. Even more important, large-scale immigration allows us to ignore the deterioration in labor-force participation. It seems very unlikely we will ever address this serious problem as long as businesses have access to a free flow of immigrant labor.