Though President Joe Biden touts the economy under his administration, polls consistently show Americans are sour on the state of economic affairs — probably because, as economist E.J. Antoni told The Federalist, “the economy has only been adding jobs that are held by foreign-born workers while native-born Americans are losing jobs.”
Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for the month of May shows that foreign-born workers in the United States gained 637,000 jobs year-over-year, while native-born workers lost roughly 299,000.
The BLS acknowledges foreign-born workers includes illegal immigrants.
“It is likely that both surveys include at least some undocumented immigrants. However, neither the establishment nor the household survey is designed to identify the legal status of workers,” the BLS states, adding they have no idea how many native-born workers are illegal.
Antoni pointed out in a post on X that “native-born employment is not only millions below pre-pandemic trend, but even below pre-pandemic level, while millions more foreign workers are employed today than [February of 2020], and back to trend.”
The left has tried to spin the taking of American jobs by foreign-born workers as “propelling the economy.”
PBS News argues that illegal immigrants — who broke the law to get here and in most cases have meritless asylum claims — are somehow responsible for saving the economy.
“Thousands of employers desperately needed the new arrivals. The economy — and consumer spending — had roared back from the pandemic recession. Companies were struggling to hire enough workers to keep up with customer orders.”
But as Antoni explained to The Federalist, the drain on the economy surely offsets their production value.
“When they make these claims about how illegal immigration has helped the United States economy they’re always talking about things like ‘Here are all the jobs they do.’ They never talk about all the costs that illegal immigration imposes,” Antoni argued.
“These people are using emergency rooms and they’re not paying their hospital bills. These people have their kids in public schools which they’re not paying taxes to fund. Illegal immigrants are imposing serious and significant costs,” he continued. “Housing is another huge one. Where are these 12+ million illegal aliens staying? They are staying in apartments, they are staying in houses which means they are increasing demand and driving up rent prices. So you can say they’re adding production to the economy but they’re also adding significant costs.”
The jobs report also showed that full-time jobs decreased by 625,000 when compared to April, while part-time employed workers grew by 286,000. At least 16,000 additional workers were reported to be holding at least two jobs when compared to April.
The Biden administration has touted a “strong labor market,” but job gains were largely concentrated in health care, government, and leisure and hospitality.
While the unemployment rate increased slightly to 4.0%, Antoni explained in a post on X that there are “millions of people missing from the labor market” who are not included in the unemployment rate. If those people are included, unemployment suddenly jumps anywhere between 6.5% and 8.0% “depending on methodology.”
The BLS estimates that there are 5.7 million people who are “not in the labor force” but “currently want a job.”
“These individuals were not counted as unemployed because they were not actively looking for work during the 4 weeks preceding the survey or were unavailable to take a job,” according to BLS.
“Before the pandemic, this number was actually trending down,” Antoni explained to The Federalist. “It peaked in 2018 and because the labor market was so strong in 2018/2019, that number was trending down. In other words, people who previously had left the labor force were re-entering because it was basically so easy to get jobs — good paying, blue collar jobs — and so not only are we well above the pre-pandemic level, we are way above the pre-pandemic trend in terms of people missing from the labor force.”
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.
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