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Immigration is one of today's hot-button topics, and voters say it plays a central role in the outcome of November's elections. Another decisive electoral concern is the U.S. economy, whose remarkable strength and productivity owes a considerable debt to those same foreign workers, according to new figures--something most businesses owners already know.
The contribution of non-native workers to the U.S. economy's booming labor market was the focus of a Wednesday Washington Post report, which contrasted that positive role with the negative themes the immigration debate generates. Around "50 percent of the labor market's extraordinary recent growth came from foreign-born workers," the paper said, citing an Economic Policy Institute analysis of federal data. Moreover, far from stealing jobs from Americans as immigration foes have often claimed, the analysis said immigrant workers took on openings that employers had been struggling to fill.
That dynamic isn't news to owners of smaller companies and businesses with lower paying work. The reason? As employees left jobs after the pandemic, abandoning spots they considered unsatisfactory, underpaid, or just unwanted, immigrants filled many of those vacated positions, which employers couldn't otherwise fill. Without foreign-born people taking up the slack in the labor market, the U.S. economy would not have been able to begin and continue its fast, robust rebound.
"You can't grow like this with just the native workforce," Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas vice president Pia Orrenius told the Post, stressing the valuable contributions of immigrants that are often obscured in the acrimonious political debate. "It's not possible... [and immigration's] been instrumental."
Immigrant labor also fed a virtuous upward labor cycle during the economy's astonishing post-pandemic resurgence. Without those immigrant workers to fill vacant positions, companies would have faltered and growth would have stalled. At the same time, because employment markets were so tight, foreign-born workers also benefitted from the rising wage trend that helped U.S. natives.
The result today is historically low U.S. unemployment and continued, though moderate economic expansion here, as nations in Europe and around the globe battle to avoid recession. But the political dimensions of the immigration debate frame the issue almost entirely negatively.
A new Gallup Poll shows immigration tops the list of the biggest U.S. problems cited by respondents, followed by the government, the economy, and inflation.
"The 28% currently naming immigration as the most important problem essentially ties the 27% reading from July 2019 as the highest in Gallup's trend," the polling agency noted, indicating the failure of political efforts to address undocumented immigration may explain why "government" is named as the second-largest problem.
Indeed, the influx of undocumented foreigners is at the heart of the divisive aspects of the immigration issue. It's also a concern shared by many small-business owners, including those whose foreign-born workers filled a labor market gap when the economy needed it most. That's not necessarily a hypocritical position, but the clashing realities make it clear how crucial a political resolution is to national economic fortunes.
According to recent estimates by the Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. workforce is on target to expand by 5.2 million people through 2032. That will be driven in large part by new immigrant arrivals, who are expected to help generate $7 trillion in nationwide economic growth over the same period--a forecast figure that would be far smaller without them.
Those parallel aspects of the immigration issue mean voters in November must decide whether the economy or migration politics is the most important factor in casting their ballots. Their choices will help determine the pace and extent of U.S. growth over the next decade and beyond.
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29.02.2024
Secure 2.0 Offers Some Sweet Tax Benefits and Companies Are Starting to Take Advantage
Meet Your Newest HR Helper: A.I.
Elon Musk's Boring Company Subjected Workers to Toxic Sludge That Left Their Arms and Legs Permanently Scarred
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More Than Three-Quarters of Economists Predict This Year Will End With a Soft Landing
How a Nebraska Hospital Used AI to Cut Its Turnover in Half
After 3 Months of Gains, Consumer Confidence Backtracks in February
Immigration is one of today's hot-button topics, and voters say it plays a central role in the outcome of November's elections. Another decisive electoral concern is the U.S. economy, whose remarkable strength and productivity owes a considerable debt to those same foreign workers, according to new figures--something most businesses owners already know.
The contribution of non-native workers to the U.S. economy's booming labor market was the focus of a Wednesday Washington Post report, which contrasted that positive role with the negative themes the........
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