Report
Working-Age, but Not Working
A look at the decades-long decline in labor force participation among the U.S.-born and its implications for immigration policy
By Steven A. Camarota and Karen Zeigler, August 21, 2023
Excerpt: The labor force participation rate — the share working or looking for work — of U.S.-born men has declined dramatically since the 1960s, particularly for those without a bachelor’s degree. While participation has roughly returned to pre-pandemic levels, the rate in 2019 was extremely low by historical standards. This is relevant to the immigration debate because one of the arguments for allowing in so many legal immigrants, or even tolerating illegal immigration, is that the low unemployment rate, along with the aging of the U.S. population, means there are not enough workers. But this ignores the enormous increase in the number of working-age people not in the labor force who do not show up as unemployed because they are not actively looking for work. Further, being out of the labor force is associated with a host of profound social problems, from crime and social isolation to overdose deaths and welfare dependency. Policy-makers should consider encouraging work among the millions on the economic sidelines rather than ignoring the problem and continuing to allow in large numbers of immigrants.
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Podcast
Guestworker Programs: Can They Ever Work as Advertised?
Host: Mark Krikorian
Guest: David North, CIS Fellow
Parsing Immigration Policy, 119
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Featured Posts
CBP Releases Bad Border Numbers in Friday News Dump
By Andrew R. Arthur
Excerpt: The July statistics reveal that the Biden administration’s recent border security initiatives are worthless, and that the White House is continuing to funnel aliens with no right to be here into the United States. That’s bad, but not as bad at the fact that the administration is actively trying to hide the disaster from you.
Big-City Officials Demanding Migrant ‘Solutions’ that Will Make Their Problems Worse
By Andrew R. Arthur
Excerpt: Somehow, the same news division that produced Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite has morphed into a journalistic amoeba that simply digests whatever talking points it receives on immigration and emits slanted articles devoid of real analysis, let alone logic.
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The Long-Term Decline in Labor Force Participation at the State Level, 1960 to 2023
By Steven A. Camarota
Excerpt: The findings reported here show that the labor force participation rate — the share working or looking for work — of U.S.-born men of working-age has declined for six decades in nearly every state, especially for men without a bachelor’s degree. While participation has roughly returned to pre-pandemic levels in most states, the rate in 2019, before Covid, was extremely low by historic standards. Because they are not actively looking for a job, those out of the labor force are not counted as unemployed.
DHS Delays Updating USCIS’s Fee Schedule, Exacerbating the Agency’s Financial Woes
By Elizabeth Jacobs
Excerpt: The postponement of a final fee rule suggests USCIS may be altering its fee schedule in light of criticism it has received from the public on its plan to disproportionately increase fees for employers and other non-humanitarian categories, but suppress fees elsewhere across the immigration system.
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