This Issue: Labor force yet to return to pre-pandemic levels, despite calls for more immigration

Fri, Mar. 18^th

Despite efforts by Congress to increase legal immigration in what some are calling a nationwide labor shortage, new analysis of government data by Steve Camarota and Karen Zeigler from the Center of Immigration Studies found that Americans have not yet returned to the labor force at pre-pandemic levels.

According to Camarota's analysis, the labor participation rate for working-age Americans (16-64) was only 73.2% -- down nearly a full percentage point from the pre-pandemic rate of 74.1%.

Perhaps the most startling finding from the CIS report is that the labor force participation rate is down by more than 5% since 2000 when 77.3% of working-age Americans held a job. If employers improved recruiting so the percentage of those Americans in the labor force returned to the 2000 level, there would be 7 million more American workers available for U.S. jobs.

SPENDING BILL ADDED MORE FOREIGN WORKERS

As I reported last week, the omnibus spending bill passed by Congress and signed into law by Pres. Joe Biden allowed for the near-doubling of H-2B guest worker visa program and reauthorized the EB-5 foreign investor visa program.

Additionally, House Democrats passed the America COMPETES Act earlier this year that would have added tens of thousands of new foreign workers each year, and Pres. Biden's Build Back Better legislation that passed the House before hitting resistance in the Senate would have added approximately 9.5 million additional foreign workers over the next 10 years.

But Congress isn't the only one calling for more foreign workers.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is among a number of business groups calling for more foreign workers. Just last week the Chamber called for a massive increase in legal immigration, saying that the country needs more foreign workers to fill an estimated 11.3 million open jobs. This is a high number, but there always are a minimum of several million job openings because of the churn of people changing jobs.

PLENTY OF AMERICANS TO FILL OPEN JOBS

But according to the CIS analysis, there are plenty of working-age Americans to fill these open jobs if employers are willing to properly train and pay Americans. Among their findings:

The total number of working-age immigrants and U.S.-born not working -- unemployed or not in the labor force at all -- in the fourth quarter of 2021 was 60.6 million.
In the fourth quarter of 2021, only 70.2 percent of U.S.-born Americans without a college degree were in the labor force, compared to 71.4 percent in 2019, 74.3 percent in 2007, and 76.4 percent in 2000.
Among U.S.-born working-age Black American adults without a bachelor's degree, only 66.3 percent were in the labor force in the fourth quarter of 2021, compared to 71 percent of U.S.-born whites and 72 percent of U.S.-born Hispanics.

You can read the full CIS' report by clicking here.

CHRIS Chmielenski
NumbersUSA Deputy Director

AGDAILY: A number of publications, including AGDAILY, picked up NumbersUSA's release on our new national sprawl study.

America lost 17,800 square miles of open space to development between 2002 and 2017, according to a study released today by NumbersUSA. That's equivalent to an area the size of Maryland and Connecticut combined.

"Our nation is losing open space at an alarming rate," said Leon Kolankiewicz, an environmental planner and co-author of the study. "Our analysis -- which includes searchable county-level data -- shows that every state has lost rural land this century."

The study -- From Sea to Shining Sprawling Sea: Quantifying the Loss of Open Space in America -- uses U.S. Department of Agriculture data from every state excluding Alaska to detail how much land has been converted from forests and fields into strip malls, subdivisions, and other development.

In an obvious attempt to encourage massive additional refugee resettlement in the U.S., the federal Department of Interior this week tweeted out the Emma Lazarus poem on a plaque inside the Statue of Liberty that seems to call for every struggling person in the world to move to the U.S.

Roy's book tells the real story of the statue and how its intended symbolism was nearly the opposite of what the well-known poem suggests. Here is a YouTube audio of Roy talking with a Los Angeles radio host about the statue and how harmful mass immigration is to the most vulnerable Americans. Listen to the full audiobook by clicking below.

White House Announces New Title 42 Caveat for Unaccompanied Alien Children

Thu, Mar. 17^th

Late last Friday, the White House announced that it plans to exempt unaccompanied alien children (UAC) from the pandemic border shutdown known as Title 42. The Biden Admin. stated that it revisited the issue and decided that when it comes to the possible spread of Covid19, alien children who show up without parents arent as much of a risk as other illegal border jumpers.

Illegal-Alien Encounters Back on the Rise in Feb. After Slight Fall in Jan.

Wed, Mar. 16^th

The number of illegal alien encounters rose in February after a slight decrease in January. According to DHS data, the rise was primarily due to single adult migrants, particularly from Mexico, who illegally crossed the border at their highest rate in many years.

Overshoot Day...already

Amy Boylan

Tue, Mar. 15^th

Each year, the Global Footprint Network measures when "when humanity's demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year." This is measured based on the needs and use of our global population, but the Global Footprint Network also breaks this down by country. This year, Overshoot Day in the United States was March 13. Our population growth is straining our natural resources and threatening biodiversity. As long as our population continues to grow due to immigration, which can be attributed primarily to Congress's immigration policies, our environmental woes will only be further exacerbated.

Immigration Arrests and Deportations Plummet During Biden's First Year

Tue, Mar. 15^th

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported late last week that immigration arrests fell sharply to just 74,082 in FY21, deportations also fell 70% to just 59,011 in FY21.

Sen. Sinema (D-Ariz.) Calls-Out Biden's Lack of Action on Border

Mon, Mar. 14^th

According to Senator Krysten Sinema (D-Ariz.), President Biden has done "nothing" to stop the record-smashing flow of illegal aliens across the United States' southern border.