Thread: Immigration -- fix for aging work force

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/2 ... ant09.html

Sunday, July 9, 2006

Immigration -- fix for aging work force

By MARK TRAHANT
P-I EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR

A doughnut shop seems like a good place for talk about the future of work.

President Bush visited a Dunkin' Donuts/Baskin Robbins in Alexandria, Va., last week and met with four immigrants who own and manage the business.

"These people remind me that one of the great features of our country is that people are able to come here and realize dreams," the president said. "One of the problems we have because our economy is strong is that small-business owners have trouble finding workers. People come here to work."

In Philadelphia, at a Senate hearing, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg was more direct. He told The Washington Post that "the economics are very simple. We need more workers than we have."

Ronald Bird, an economist at the Department of Labor, said immigrants are a significant and growing part of the U.S. work force.

But I want to start with something Bird said a couple of years ago. "Much of today's employment policy framework was constructed over half a century ago -- reflecting the experience of the Great Depression and the social and economic structure of the 1930s and 1940s," Bird said. "Today's American workplace is dramatically different ... we have moved from an era in which workers were plentiful and job opportunities scarce to the opposite -- qualified workers are scarce and job opportunities are plentiful."

We should be talking about immigration in that context -- the increasing scarcity of qualified workers.

Bird told last week's Senate hearing that the foreign-born labor force represents nearly 40 percent of labor force growth since 2002 -- and it is a key reason why the country has the "capacity to maintain growing national output."

Two years ago -- when Bird talked about the dramatic shift in employment eras -- our political discourse raised the threat of "outsourcing." Foreign call centers and other such ventures were taking "our" jobs. And it was a big deal: I did a quick database survey of 2004 stories in the P-I and 172 cited "outsourcing" as an issue, while only 24 mentioned illegal immigration. Today a similar database survey shows 152 references to "illegal immigration" and "outsourcing" popped up only 25 times.

"Outsourcing" and "illegal immigration" are mirror edges from the same debate -- the future of work in America. The larger narrative ought to be the aging of America's work force and the dramatic changes that portends. I think it means the country's businesses will outsource more, be more creative in hiring and we, the baby boom generation, will continue to work well past the retirement age of our parents.

But the continued hiring of migrants will be a part of that future, too.

Consider the construction industry. A recent report by the Department of Labor says that for the past two decades, the labor force has been ample, driven by the sheer number of baby boomers. "The current reality is that such growth in new and educated native-born workers has ended. The number of native-born workers age 34-44 will be smaller in the next 30 years and more than 60 million current employees will likely retire."

The construction industry is already "starving for folks," the Labor Department says. "Some industry representatives point out that the pipeline of potential employees is essentially empty and yet demand is growing, not standing still."

Today "unauthorized workers" -- the label used by the Pew Hispanic Center -- account for nearly 5 percent of the overall U.S. labor force, or about 7.2 million workers. Of those, nearly 20 percent work in construction-related jobs.

"Unauthorized migrants make up a larger share of all workers in a few more detailed occupational categories," Pew reports. "For example, the unauthorized were 36 percent of all insulation workers and 29 percent of all roofers and drywall installers."

These numbers -- and the prospects of what is to come -- are the reason why Bush favors some sort of system that incorporates those workers into any legislation. Back at the doughnut shop, Bush said he didn't favor amnesty: "But I'm also realistic to tell you that we're not going to be able to deport people who have been here, working hard and raising their families."

People come here to work, the president said. Five powerful words. And, as a middle-age baby boomer, hoping to one day retire, I certainly hope people continue to come here to work.

Mark Trahant is editor of the editorial page. E-mail: marktrahant@seattlepi.com.

There is a basic principle people generally wait to have their children until they can support them at the level they themselves were brought up. If there are a large number of new laborers brought in to compete the local laborers avoid having children until later in their lives in hopes that their own relative income will have then caught up.

The newer laborers coming in from a lower income area find that although they are making less than traditional for that job in that area are doing now better than their parents did.
This is an unfair advantage for the newcoming laborers in terms of having children.

The newcoming laborers are also not all that much younger
than the locals are. There is some saving to their employers
in hiring the newcomers from a lower income area but it is a lousy deal for the society as a whole.

I wonder what they are going to say when the economy goes belly up?

The party line is the economy is just doing fantastic. Well that is not what the middle class is seeing in the real world, at least in my little corner of the real world. The price of everything is going up housing, gas, food, auto insurance, property insurance, property taxes, etc. Yet my husband's wages and my wages are stagnant.

They can keep spouting how well the economy is doing but the numbers the middle class live with every day...income vs. expenditures...do not lie.

Hi dim,

Let me just remind everyone:

http://www.alipac.us/modules.php?name=N ... e&sid=1144

This is just one example of Americans losing jobs to illegal aliens.

Good morning, Pat