NATIONAL DATA: April Jobs Disaster — Immigrants Poised To Displace Americans

By Peter Brimelow

05/10/2021

[Research by Edwin S. Rubenstein]

The U.S. economy added only 266,000 jobs in April, well short of the 1 million or so expected by forecasters. And the unemployment rate rose to 6.1%, the first increase since April 2020. This was obviously a huge shock to the Biden Administration, which is frantically insisting that its extraordinary Covid-related unemployment payouts haven’t backfired in the labor market [Stay-at-Home Americans Sow White House Angst on Jobs Miss, by Mario Parker, Bloomberg May 8, 2021]. No one believes this [‘Dude, Where’s My Workforce?,’ Issues and Insights, May 10, 2021].But VDARE.com, in its nonpartisan way, can offer Biden some solace: immigrant displacement of American workers is still stalled, oddly, albeit at a high level. But the Immigrant Work Force is still surging. So, on present course, displacement will resume soon.

The generally paradoxical nature of the April report was articulated well by New York Times reporter Neil Irwin:

The details of the new numbers are messy. Temporary employment fell sharply (down 111,000 jobs), while hiring in the leisure and hospitality sector was robust (up 331,000 jobs). It will take time to figure out why so many mainstream forecasts were so wrong — the modest job creation is out of whack with what other indicators have suggested — and whether some part of the weak results is more statistical aberration than reality.

The U.S. still has 8.2 million fewer jobs than it did before the pandemic. Even if employers kept hiring at the March pace, it would take months to return to the Trump era job peak.

The Jobs Report: The Boom That Wasn’t, May 7, 2021

(NYTman Irwin [Tweet him] was dismissive or in denial about the distorting effects of the Biden welfare handout, saying “Many employers and conservatives argue that the expanded federal unemployment benefits have been too generous…”).

The key point for VDARE.com readers: the Immigrant Work Force foreign-born working-age population increased, albeit at a slightly lower pace, in April.

It is vital to note carefully what this chart shows. Unlike our other charts, which show absolute values, this one compares each month to the same month in the preceding year.

Beginning in mid-2019 — that is, far preceding the Covid pandemic — the population of working-age immigrants declined year-over-year. This far exceeded the net exodus during the 2008 Great Recession, and the brief net exodus during Trump’s first year, when his mere presence seems to have jawboned illegals into fleeing. It apparently reflected Trump’s executive orders — his “Invisible Wall.”

The immigrant Work Force population started growing again only in December 2020 — arguably when the election results spurred a renewed invasion.

So the Immigrant Work Force population grew by 542,000 in April 2021 compared to its level in April 2020. The corresponding increase for March was 736,000, but April’s small slowing in the rate of increase should not mask the fact that immigrants — legal and illegal, federal data does not distinguish — are now pouring in (to an economy supposedly racked by unemployment) at an extraordinary rate.

Significantly, this did not happen in the 2008–2009 Great Recession: then, the foreign-born went home. This is a policy-driven, rather than an economic, influx. In other words, it’s Biden’s fault.

The Immigrant Work Force Population Surge’s full effect on displacement and wage rates have yet to be felt.

The “other” employment survey,” of Households rather than businesses, showed a 328,000 gain for the month. As VDARE.com has argued in the past, the Household survey reports foreign-born status (legality unspecified) and therefore probably reflects the hiring of illegal aliens.

By our calculations, which adjust for seasonal effects, both the March and April Household Surveys found that native-born Americans gained jobs, while immigrants lost them.

In April:

• Immigrants (legal and illegal) lost 141,000 jobs, a 0.54% fall from March.
• Native-born Americans gained 469,000 positions, a 0.38% rise from March
• Thus VDARE.com’s immigrant employment index, set at 100.0 in January 2009, fell to 119.2 from 119.9 in March, a 0.54% reduction.
• VDARE.com’s Native-Born employment index rose to 104.0 from 103.6 in March, a 0.38% increase.

This means that the New VDARE American Worker Displacement Index (NVDAWDI), our name for the ratio of immigrant to native-born American employment growth indexes since Jan. 2009, fell to 114.7 from 115.7 in March, a 0.92% decline. VDAWDI is normalized at 100 for Americans and immigrants when the Obama Administration began in 2009.

This means American Worker Displacement is now roughly the same as it was when Donald Trump was inaugurated (and, of course, much higher than when Obama was inaugurated). After wild gyrations during Trump’s Administration, it finally fell, partly because of the pandemic and partly because of his Executive Actions. Now it will probably resume the increase of the Obama years…unless the political climate changes again.

Economic trends rarely move in straight lines. Among many possible explanations for the two-month respite in displacement was the horrific weather in March and early April, which may have depressed predominantly blue-collar immigrants’ employment more than that of their white-collar native-born counterparts, who can Zoom — thereby producing larger March job gains for the native-born.

Or perhaps the illegal immigrant invasion unleashed at the southern border by the Biden Regime is more than usually underage and/or unskilled.

Another displacement metric — the immigrant share of total employment — was also flat in April.

Our analysis shows 17.07% of April jobs were held by immigrants — below March’s 17.20% and February’s 17.30%. In April 2020 immigrants held 16.47% of jobs.

Note that, after some gyrations, the immigrant share of employment had been falling steadily since early 2020, even before the pandemic started, as Trump’s administrative actions took effect. But, again, as we predicted, the Trump gains have been wiped out and the immigrant share seems to resume its Obama-Era upward march

Remember, each 1% rise in immigrant employment share represents a transfer of about 1.5 million jobs from native-born Americans to immigrants. (Under the Trump Administration, the figures would go the other way — in April, 2020, we wrote “Each 1% decline in immigrant employment share represents a transfer of 1.6 million jobs from immigrants to native-born workers”.)

A more detailed picture of how American workers have fared vis-à-vis immigrants is published in Table A-7 of the monthly BLS Report:

From APRIL 2020 to APRIL 2021:

• The immigrant working age population rose by 542,000, a gain of 1.28%; the corresponding native-born American population rose by 665,000 — a rise of 0.31%. ADVANTAGE IMMIGRANTS, AS THEIR POPULATION OF WORKING AGE GREW MORE THAN 4.2 TIMES FASTER THAN THAT OF NATIVE-BORN AMERICANS.
• Immigrants gained 3.9 million jobs since last April — a 17.9% gain; native-born American workers gained 13.9 million, a gain of 12.5% over this period. ADVANTAGE IMMIGRANTS.
• The immigrant civilian labor force (working or looking for work) rose by 1.36 million, or 5.2%; the native-born American labor force rose by 3.2 million, or 2.5%. ADVANTAGE IMMIGRANTS.
• The unemployment rate for native-born Americans fell from 14.0% to 5.6%, a 61.2% reduction; the immigrant unemployment rate fell from 16.5% to 6.4% — a 60.0% reduction. SLIGHT ADVANTAGE FOR NATIVE-BORN AMERICANS, THOUGH UNEMPLOYMENT RATES FOR BOTH ARE WELL ABOVE PRE-PANDEMIC LEVELS.
• 7.5 million native-born American, and 1.8 million immigrants, were unemployed in April; over the past 12 months the number of unemployed immigrants fell by 59.3%, while the number of native-born jobless declined 59.0% A TIE.
• Labor Force Participation Rates (LPR) rose for both immigrants and native-born American workers. However, the rise in LPR for native-born over the past 12 months (2.2%) is considerably below that of immigrants (3.9%). This may reflect work disincentives of unemployment insurance and other social safety-net programs that, in most of the country, are more easily obtained by native-born than immigrants. ADVANTAGE IMMIGRANTS.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is calling for a curtailment of Covid job benefits, stupidly not realizing that its triumph in electing Joe Biden would lead exactly to this. Next, it will demand increased immigration. Whether it succeeds will be a measure of whether America, as a nation as opposed to a strip mall, survives.

Peter Brimelow is the editor of VDARE.com. His best-selling book, Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster, is now available in Kindle format.

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