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Washington, D.C. (July 26, 2019) – New analysis from the Center for Immigration Studies finds that although unemployment rates are low, high levels of unskilled immigration have lowered labor-force participation rates for native-born Americans, particularly those without a college degree.
Steven Camarota, the Center's Director of Research, said, "The long-term decline in the labor force participation rate and stagnation of wages for low-skilled Americans have contributed to a host of social problems, from the opioid epidemic to the breakdown of families. As long as we continue to admit large numbers of low-skilled immigrants, this decline will almost certainly persist."
Read the full analysis: https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2019/08/12/unskilled-immigration-lowers-labor-force-participation/
Among the findings:
- Among men ages 25 to 64 without a bachelor’s degree, 81 percent were in the labor force as of the first quarter of this year. Despite the strong economy, this figure is down from 84 percent at the peak of the last expansion, in 2007. In 2000, that figure was 85 percent, and in 1989 it was 87 percent.
- Among women, labor-force participation increased steadily until 2000, but it has followed the pattern for men since then.
- Wages have also stagnated or declined for the less educated. Pew Research reports that since 2000, the bottom quarter of earners saw just a 4.3 percent real-wage increase — equivalent to an annual raise of just 0.2 percent
- Despite claims from advocates of high immigration that there are some jobs Americans won't do, a majority of workers in just about every occupation identified by the Census Bureau are U.S.-born. For example, more than half of maids are native-born, as are 64 percent of meatpackers, 65 percent of construction laborers, and 66 percent of groundskeepers. Wages in all of these sectors show stagnation or long-term decline, so if there is a great need for such workers, why not let wages rise?
- Even the agriculture industry only employs 2 percent of all immigrants and 4 percent of illegal immigrants in the United States.
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