Thread: Why the new jobs go to immigrants

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0310/p17s01-cogn.html

Why the new jobs go to immigrants
By David R. Francis

Wall Street cheered and stock prices rose when the US Labor Department announced last Friday that employers had expanded their payrolls by 262,000 positions in February.

But it wasn't entirely good news. The statisticians also indicated that the share of the adult population holding jobs had slipped slightly from January to 62.3 percent. That's now two full percentage points below the level in the brief recession that began in March 2001.

Why the apparent contradiction? Reasons abound: population growth, rising retirements. But one factor that gets little attention is immigration.

In the past four years, the number of immigrants into the US, legal and illegal, has closely matched the number of new jobs. That suggests newcomers have, in effect, snapped up all of the new jobs.

"There has been no net job gain for natives," says Andrew Sum, an economist at Northeastern University.

Something similar has happened in Western Europe. Each year, about 500,000 to 800,000 illegal immigrants enter the 15 member nations of the European Union (not including the 10 new members as of last May), estimates Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington. While it's more difficult for immigrants to get into Europe legally, once in they have more social and labor rights and protections than legal immigrants in the US do, says Mr. Papademetriou. And in Europe, illegal immigrants have a relatively bigger underground economy in which to find work.

If anything, the job outlook for native Europeans is bleaker than for Americans. Unemployment remains high in most of Europe. It hit 12.6 percent in Germany last month, the highest since World War II.

So with people from poor nations striving to get in and natives often losing out in the competition for many new jobs, the US and EU might be expected to have coherent immigration policies. Instead, chaos reigns.

Concerned with extremely low birthrates in Western Europe, the European Commission has suggested common policies to attract immigrants to fill longer-term needs for labor. Instead, national policies vary enormously.

In Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece, for instance, illegal immigrants flood across the borders, despite efforts to stop them, and then once inside are frequently legalized by government edicts.

"There is no rhyme nor reason to much of this," says Mr. Papademetriou.

In the US, President Bush calls for giving millions of illegal immigrants a kind of guest-worker status as a legal path to US citizenship. So far, no specific legislation to implement his suggestion has been put before Congress.

Meanwhile, US border patrols spend millions of dollars a year trying to keep illegals out. And yet, they keep coming, evidently little discouraged by recession or the 9/11 attacks. In the past four years alone, the number of immigrants ran some 2.5 million to 3 million, of which about half were illegal.

They come for jobs, of course. And the Bush administration makes barely any effort to enforce current law. In 2003, a total of 13 employers were fined for hiring undocumented employees.

In fact, neither Republicans nor Democrats have promoted enforcement of immigration law prohibiting the hiring of illegal immigrants, says Mr. Sum, head of Northeastern's Center for Labor Market Studies.

Of course, not every job filled by an immigrant is taken away from a native American, a native German, a French citizen, or other national.

Most immigrants take jobs at the bottom of the ladder, jobs which many natives won't seek because they are considered too hard, pay too little, or have lost status, Papademetriou notes.

And the people they do displace often have little political clout. Sum sees immigrants as one factor behind today's historical low employment rate among US teenagers. Barely more than a third hold jobs. Over the past four years, the number of employed teens has declined by nearly 1.3 million.

Teens used to take many of the entry level jobs offered by restaurants, retail stores, landscaping companies, factories, and other businesses. Now more teens are going to college, and many may not want or need to work. But a new study by Sum and his colleagues at Northeastern finds that 2.5 million teens last year were unemployed, underemployed, or had stopped looking for work in the past month. They faced severe competition for jobs from young adults, older women, and immigrants - most of whom are young.

That lack of employment has social implications. The study notes that youths who work more during their high school years have an easier time transitioning to the labor market upon high school graduation, especially those not going on to college. Jobless teenage women are more likely to get pregnant, and economically disadvantaged boys and girls are more likely to drop out of school if jobless.

In occupational fields with many immigrants, native-born workers tend to have higher jobless rates. The four occupations with the largest number of newly arrived immigrants (1.4 million in construction, food preparation, cleaning and maintenance, and production workers) employ 21.4 million natives, and have more than 2 million unemployed natives.

What employers really want in many cases by hiring immigrants is to hold down wage costs, experts say.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0310/p17s01-cogn.html

Why the new jobs go to immigrants
By David R. Francis

Wall Street cheered and stock prices rose when the US Labor Department announced last Friday that employers had expanded their payrolls by 262,000 positions in February.

But it wasn't entirely good news. The statisticians also indicated that the share of the adult population holding jobs had slipped slightly from January to 62.3 percent. That's now two full percentage points below the level in the brief recession that began in March 2001.

Why the apparent contradiction? Reasons abound: population growth, rising retirements. But one factor that gets little attention is immigration.

In the past four years, the number of immigrants into the US, legal and illegal, has closely matched the number of new jobs. That suggests newcomers have, in effect, snapped up all of the new jobs.

"There has been no net job gain for natives," says Andrew Sum, an economist at Northeastern University.

Something similar has happened in Western Europe. Each year, about 500,000 to 800,000 illegal immigrants enter the 15 member nations of the European Union (not including the 10 new members as of last May), estimates Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington. While it's more difficult for immigrants to get into Europe legally, once in they have more social and labor rights and protections than legal immigrants in the US do, says Mr. Papademetriou. And in Europe, illegal immigrants have a relatively bigger underground economy in which to find work.

If anything, the job outlook for native Europeans is bleaker than for Americans. Unemployment remains high in most of Europe. It hit 12.6 percent in Germany last month, the highest since World War II.

So with people from poor nations striving to get in and natives often losing out in the competition for many new jobs, the US and EU might be expected to have coherent immigration policies. Instead, chaos reigns.

Concerned with extremely low birthrates in Western Europe, the European Commission has suggested common policies to attract immigrants to fill longer-term needs for labor. Instead, national policies vary enormously.

In Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece, for instance, illegal immigrants flood across the borders, despite efforts to stop them, and then once inside are frequently legalized by government edicts.

"There is no rhyme nor reason to much of this," says Mr. Papademetriou.

In the US, President Bush calls for giving millions of illegal immigrants a kind of guest-worker status as a legal path to US citizenship. So far, no specific legislation to implement his suggestion has been put before Congress.

Meanwhile, US border patrols spend millions of dollars a year trying to keep illegals out. And yet, they keep coming, evidently little discouraged by recession or the 9/11 attacks. In the past four years alone, the number of immigrants ran some 2.5 million to 3 million, of which about half were illegal.

They come for jobs, of course. And the Bush administration makes barely any effort to enforce current law. In 2003, a total of 13 employers were fined for hiring undocumented employees.

In fact, neither Republicans nor Democrats have promoted enforcement of immigration law prohibiting the hiring of illegal immigrants, says Mr. Sum, head of Northeastern's Center for Labor Market Studies.

Of course, not every job filled by an immigrant is taken away from a native American, a native German, a French citizen, or other national.

Most immigrants take jobs at the bottom of the ladder, jobs which many natives won't seek because they are considered too hard, pay too little, or have lost status, Papademetriou notes.

And the people they do displace often have little political clout. Sum sees immigrants as one factor behind today's historical low employment rate among US teenagers. Barely more than a third hold jobs. Over the past four years, the number of employed teens has declined by nearly 1.3 million.

Teens used to take many of the entry level jobs offered by restaurants, retail stores, landscaping companies, factories, and other businesses. Now more teens are going to college, and many may not want or need to work. But a new study by Sum and his colleagues at Northeastern finds that 2.5 million teens last year were unemployed, underemployed, or had stopped looking for work in the past month. They faced severe competition for jobs from young adults, older women, and immigrants - most of whom are young.

That lack of employment has social implications. The study notes that youths who work more during their high school years have an easier time transitioning to the labor market upon high school graduation, especially those not going on to college. Jobless teenage women are more likely to get pregnant, and economically disadvantaged boys and girls are more likely to drop out of school if jobless.

In occupational fields with many immigrants, native-born workers tend to have higher jobless rates. The four occupations with the largest number of newly arrived immigrants (1.4 million in construction, food preparation, cleaning and maintenance, and production workers) employ 21.4 million natives, and have more than 2 million unemployed natives.

What employers really want in many cases by hiring immigrants is to hold down wage costs, experts say.

Interesting, true, scary and sickening.

Sounds like the writer read Buchanan's book The Death of the West before he wrote this article.

Interesting, true, scary and sickening.

Sounds like the writer read Buchanan's book The Death of the West before he wrote this article.

OUR CORRUPT POLITICIANS ARE TRYING TO COMPEAT IN A WORLD ECONOMY....... THE ONLY WAY WE CAN COMPEAT IN A WORLD ECONOMY IS IF WE USE OUR PRISON POPULATION TO MAKE GOODS, AS THEY ARE THE ONLY ONES IN THIS COUNTRY WHO MAKES 1$ A DAY......AND BY THE TIME THESE CORRUPT POLITICIANS FIGURE THIS OUT, WELL IT'S ALREADY TOO LATE, WITH A 65 BILLION $ TRADE DEFFISET WITH CHINA THIS YEAR ALONE!!!!!!!!

OUR CORRUPT POLITICIANS ARE TRYING TO COMPEAT IN A WORLD ECONOMY....... THE ONLY WAY WE CAN COMPEAT IN A WORLD ECONOMY IS IF WE USE OUR PRISON POPULATION TO MAKE GOODS, AS THEY ARE THE ONLY ONES IN THIS COUNTRY WHO MAKES 1$ A DAY......AND BY THE TIME THESE CORRUPT POLITICIANS FIGURE THIS OUT, WELL IT'S ALREADY TOO LATE, WITH A 65 BILLION $ TRADE DEFFISET WITH CHINA THIS YEAR ALONE!!!!!!!!

Free trade and Nafta. I remember hearing from all of the snakeoil salesmen inside the beltway were all spewing their happy gas about how Free trade and Nafta were suppose to end illegal immigration. It was suppose to bolster the economies of these countries we have pacts with. It's done neither. It's made illegal immigration much worse, it's put us in record debts, we are losing jobs by the thousands. Plus it's gotten none of these countries like China, Mexico or anywhere in Latin America out of third world status and it's vastly weakened us as a Superpower. Have you all seen China lately? It's vastly gaining ground on us fast. We no longer are the most dominant in technologies anymore, Singapore is. Singapore? Our dollar is shrinking in value fast which means that foreign companies and banks will no longer invest in our stock. This country has become far too independent on imports. Even stuff made in the USA products are coming from China and Mexico.

But all we hear from Bush and his cronies is how great everything is and all of these new jobs created. They aren't creating any new jobs. All of these new jobs they talk about are all low paying, low skill jobs that will no doubt get shipped overseas or go toward illegals or foreign visa holders. When you see these new jobs created reports like 262,000 new jobs created this month. That is just happy gas from the politicans to deceive the public. Then we hear about the unemployment rates dropping sometimes. What they won't tell you is that most of those that stop seeking unemployment are basically taking low end, low paying jobs that don't pay anywhere close to what they use to make or basically those filing for unemployment have just simply given up looking in that particular job sector that they use to work in.

Next time (if you haven't done so already) the politicans ask you for a hand out for their next reelection campaign, you write them back a letter on their 37 cents they paid for the return mail stamp saying "I don't have any money, go ask the illegals, they have all of my money" or say "Until you fix the immigration problem then you won't get a dime from me".

Free trade and Nafta. I remember hearing from all of the snakeoil salesmen inside the beltway were all spewing their happy gas about how Free trade and Nafta were suppose to end illegal immigration. It was suppose to bolster the economies of these countries we have pacts with. It's done neither. It's made illegal immigration much worse, it's put us in record debts, we are losing jobs by the thousands. Plus it's gotten none of these countries like China, Mexico or anywhere in Latin America out of third world status and it's vastly weakened us as a Superpower. Have you all seen China lately? It's vastly gaining ground on us fast. We no longer are the most dominant in technologies anymore, Singapore is. Singapore? Our dollar is shrinking in value fast which means that foreign companies and banks will no longer invest in our stock. This country has become far too independent on imports. Even stuff made in the USA products are coming from China and Mexico.

But all we hear from Bush and his cronies is how great everything is and all of these new jobs created. They aren't creating any new jobs. All of these new jobs they talk about are all low paying, low skill jobs that will no doubt get shipped overseas or go toward illegals or foreign visa holders. When you see these new jobs created reports like 262,000 new jobs created this month. That is just happy gas from the politicans to deceive the public. Then we hear about the unemployment rates dropping sometimes. What they won't tell you is that most of those that stop seeking unemployment are basically taking low end, low paying jobs that don't pay anywhere close to what they use to make or basically those filing for unemployment have just simply given up looking in that particular job sector that they use to work in.

Next time (if you haven't done so already) the politicans ask you for a hand out for their next reelection campaign, you write them back a letter on their 37 cents they paid for the return mail stamp saying "I don't have any money, go ask the illegals, they have all of my money" or say "Until you fix the immigration problem then you won't get a dime from me".

dman1200 -

The jobs that are being "created" are the ones that are low paying, no benefits, etc. Our high paying jobs have been outsourced in order for big companies to make more money and pay out less. Of course these people don't care since they have a "golden parachute package". Big corporations and the CEO's don't care about the lowly workers. As long as it doesn't affect them and their champagne and caviar parties -- what do they care, after all -- their families and friends are provided for handsomely, can afford to travel, go to the best schools, have high priced lawyers to defend them, etc.

dman1200 -

The jobs that are being "created" are the ones that are low paying, no benefits, etc. Our high paying jobs have been outsourced in order for big companies to make more money and pay out less. Of course these people don't care since they have a "golden parachute package". Big corporations and the CEO's don't care about the lowly workers. As long as it doesn't affect them and their champagne and caviar parties -- what do they care, after all -- their families and friends are provided for handsomely, can afford to travel, go to the best schools, have high priced lawyers to defend them, etc.