On September 10, 2024, the first debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump was televised at the Juventud 2000 migrant shelter in Tijuana, Mexico. Immigration has been a hot topic throughout the presidential campaign.
Carlos Moreno/NurPhoto (via Getty Images)
The idea that immigrants are having a negative impact on the U.S. job market has been a common theme in former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign speeches.
“They’re taking your jobs,” the Republican candidate told supporters in Wilmington, North Carolina, on September 21.
Immigration is also a top issue for Republican voters, with 82% of Trump supporters saying immigration is “very important” to their vote in the 2024 presidential election, second only to the economy, according to the Pew Research Center. It states that it is the th. Pew said this is the lowest priority for Democrats. Pew surveyed 9,720 U.S. adults from August 26 to September 2.
But evidence suggests that immigration helps the economy overall. And, broadly speaking, U.S.-born (so-called mainlanders) The company says it has not taken away jobs or lowered wages for workers.
“Overall, at least the types of immigration that have historically been accepted in the United States, there are significant “The consensus is very strong that it’s cost-effective.” Penn Wharton’s budget model.
Immigration is expected to boost the economy
Economists say there are several reasons why immigration is a huge boon to the economy and the job market.
First, the job market is not static.
Economists say that while immigrants take away jobs, they also create new jobs by spending in local economies and starting businesses. A 2020 research paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that immigrants are 80% more likely to become entrepreneurs than native workers.
According to Congress’ nonpartisan statistician, the Congressional Budget Office, the recent “surge” of immigration to the United States is expected to increase U.S. GDP by $8.9 trillion (or 3.2%) over the next 10 years. are.
“This is a huge deal,” said economist Michael Clemens, a professor at George Mason University whose research examines the economic causes and effects of immigration. “It creates jobs, raises wages, and increases the size and complexity of the U.S. economy.”
Nor are immigrants perfect substitutes for U.S. citizens in many jobs. In fact, economists say the two groups often complement each other rather than compete.
However, some economic research suggests that immigration may affect wages for certain subgroups of U.S.-born workers, particularly those with lower levels of education.
Overall, the consensus is very strong that immigration does not impose significant costs to U.S.-born workers.
alexander arnon
Director of Business Tax and Economic Analysis at Penn Wharton Budget Models
Some economists argue that an influx of immigrants could lower wages for such Americans in the short term, while other researchers argue that those in direct competition with immigrants may We’re finding that Americans ultimately benefit because they can find higher-paying jobs.
“Not everyone agrees with that,” Clemens said.
He added that a large supply of new labor from immigrants could be “challenging and anxiety-provoking” for U.S. workers who must adapt.
“But people end up in a better situation,” he says.
Immigration helped cool down ‘overheated’ job market
El Chaparral pedestrian border crossing at the San Ysidro port of entry in Tijuana, Mexico, January 4, 2024.
Carlos Moreno/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Citing recently available federal data, Pew says immigrants will make up about 14% of the U.S. population in 2022.
Most are in the U.S. legally, and in 2022 illegal immigrants will account for 3.3% of the total U.S. population and 23% of immigrants, Pew said. Although that number has increased in recent years to 11 million, it remains below the 2007 peak of more than 12 million.
The number of immigrants coming to the United States “has increased sharply in recent years,” CBO wrote in July.
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According to the CBO, net immigration is expected to increase by 8.7 million people from 2021 to 2026 than would be expected from pre-COVID-19 immigration trends. (Green card holders are not included in the analysis.)
Economists say the influx is a boon to the pandemic-era economy.
Elior Cohen, an economist at the Kansas City Fed, wrote in May that this has “helped cool a labor market that has become overheated” over the past two years.
As the U.S. economy began to reopen in 2021, demand for workers reached historic highs. Wages have soared at the fastest pace in decades as businesses compete for workers and high inflation puts upward pressure on them.
Cohen writes that immigrant labor has helped ease wage inflation pressures by easing “acute labor shortages,” especially in leisure and hospitality industries.
In this sense, immigrants are not competing with Americans for jobs, but rather are taking the jobs that are available, said Giovanni Peri, an economics professor and director of the Global Migration Center at the University of California, Davis. He said that.
In fact, a long-term net decline in the number of non-college immigrants to the U.S. from 2010 to 2021 likely contributed to the recent labor shortage, he said.
“If there’s ever been a time when low-skilled immigrants weren’t competing with natives and were filling the gap, it’s been the last two years,” Peri said.
‘Little evidence’ of employment impact
Clemens said that even before the coronavirus pandemic, economists from all sides of the debate had issued a “consensus” view on the impact of immigration on the job market in 2017.
The panel of economists found “little evidence that immigration has a significant effect” on the overall employment level of Americans, wrote the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
Since then, “I would say the consensus has gotten (even) stronger,” said Arnone, a Penn Wharton budget model who authored another 2016 analysis of existing research on the economic impact of immigration.
To the extent there is competition for jobs from new immigrants, the National Academies paper says, that competition tends to fall primarily to older immigrants rather than native-born workers.
Those who immigrated in the past are most likely to experience “negative wage effects,” the report said.
However, the National Academies paper notes that native-born high school dropouts may experience similar effects because they “share similar occupational qualifications with the majority of low-skill (immigrant) workers.” said.
According to a Penn Wharton analysis, immigrants without a high school degree make up the largest share of foreign-born workers, followed by immigrants with graduate or professional degrees.
Heated debate over low-skilled workers
In April 1980, a boat carrying Cuban refugees crossed the Florida Straits from Mariel Harbor and arrived in Key West, Florida.
Tim Chapman | Miami Herald | Getty Images
An influential and controversial paper by Harvard economist George Borjas also echoes his findings on high school dropouts.
Borjas was one of more than 30 economists who wrote the National Academies’ consensus paper on the Mariel Boatlift, which led the mass migration of 125,000 Cuban refugees to South Florida from April to October 1980. Researched.
At least 60% of these “Marielitos” were high school dropouts. Borjas found that wages for high school dropouts in Miami have fallen “dramatically” by 10% to 30% due to a large increase in labor supply.
Stephen Miller, a senior policy adviser in the Trump administration, cited the 2017 paper as justification for new proposals to reduce legal immigration, especially for low-skilled workers.
Asked for comment on President Trump’s campaign statements on immigration and jobs, Anna Kelly, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, said in an emailed statement that the former president “supported all Americans, including American-born workers, “We have never wavered in our promise to stand for one principle.” and encourage companies to continue working domestically. ”
Borjas’ findings echo the economist and Nobel laureate’s findings that the Mariel boatlift did not increase unemployment or negatively impact wages for non-Cuban or Cuban “unskilled” workers. This contrasted with earlier research by David Card.
Some economists, including Clemens, dispute Borjas’ findings. Borjas did not respond to requests for comment.
“The sudden surge in immigration is clearly impacting the ability of local workers to find and get jobs on any given afternoon,” Clemens said.
But immigration “also creates jobs,” Clemens said. “Even in the short term, there is overwhelming evidence that job creation effects overwhelm competition effects.”
Impact may depend on economic environment
Migrant workers pick strawberries during harvest season south of San Francisco.
Joe Sohm/Visions of America | Universal Images Group | Getty Images
Native American workers and immigrants, even those with similar educational backgrounds, tend to complement each other through their skills, making each other more productive and essentially working together to create each other’s jobs. Clemens said there is.
For example, in a restaurant, a native worker who is fluent in English might become a waiter, while an immigrant might do jobs that don’t require linguistic dexterity, such as preparing the kitchen or washing dishes. . On farms, local workers may supervise or operate high-tech equipment while migrants hand-pick the crops, Clemens said.
A study by Peri Caiumi and Alessandro Caiumi of the University of California, Davis, found that factors such as “occupational upgrading” will cause native workers who initially competed with immigrants for jobs to It has generally been found that employees tend to earn higher wages.
For example, from 2000 to 2019, these factors helped push wages up “significantly” between 1.7% and 2.6% for less-educated native workers, while “university-educated natives’ There was no significant impact on wages,” Peri and Kaiumi wrote. Similarly, from 2019 to 2022, estimates suggest a “modest positive impact” on wages.
Ultimately, “what happened in Florida during the Mariel boatlift in the 1980s is the same as what happened in Arizona in the 2010s,” said Michael Strain, director of economic policy research at the right-wing think tank American Enterprise Institute. may be different.” .
“From a policy perspective, we need to determine which research is most relevant to the current economic environment we are considering,” Strain said.
