09/16/2021
[Research by Edwin S. Rubenstein]
America’s job recovery hit a major speed bump last month as measured by the widely cited survey of business payrolls, which showed the slowest growth since January [Jobs report disappoints — only 235,000 positions added vs. expectations of 720,000, by Jeff Cox, CNBC, September 3, 2021].
EXCLUSIVE TO VDARE.COM: The news is worse than the Regime Media is reporting — immigrants took most of what few new jobs there were. Consequently, American Worker Displacement is inching up again — at exactly the moment when the Biden Administration is scheming to push through an unprecedented Amnesty/ Immigration Surge via the budget reconciliation process and has also allowed the southern border to collapse.
The Biden Rush at the border had never stopped, it just mysteriously dropped out of Regime Media headlines. Now it’s forced its way back [A renewed, intensified crisis at the border, by Byron York, Washington Examiner, September 16, 2021]. The latest data, released Wednesday night, show Southwest border apprehensions at 209,000 in August, the second month running when they exceeded 200,000 and far higher than at any point in the Trump Administration. Contrary to President Biden’s prediction, there was no summer slowdown.
Looked at in detail, this influx is even worse than the raw numbers convey: “unaccompanied minors” and “family units” — essentially undeportable under Biden policies — are up, as are illegals from outside Mexico and the “Northern Triangle.” The entire world is responding to Biden’s “invitacion” [August Migrant Apprehension Numbers Show the Border Is in Freefall, by Andrew R. Arthur, CIS.org, September 16, 2021]. Over half of those “apprehended” are apparently released into the U.S. [CBP Releases August 2021 Operational Update, September 15, 2021].
This is treason.
The “other” employment survey, of households rather than businesses. reported August job growth of 509,000 — still well below the 700,000+ consensus of economists. But the household survey reports immigration status (legal and illegal, it doesn’t distinguish). And our analysis indicates that immigrant workers garnered more than three-quarters of the August gains:
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, rose to 116.2 in August from 114.6 in July, a 1.38% increase for the month.
Our American Worker Displacement Index, as measured by NVDAWDI, is now back to only slightly lower than it was when Donald Trump was inaugurated in January 2017. After wild gyrations during his Administration, it finally fell, partly because of the pandemic and partly because of his Executive Actions. Since Biden’s inauguration it was stalling, perhaps an artifact of this transfer-payment racked labor market, but now seems headed upward. We predict a resumption of the relentless increases of the Obama years.
Total employment in August was about 5.3 million below the pre-pandemic high reached in February 2020.
Significantly, however, the year-over-year rise in the foreign-born working-age population expanded in August for the ninth straight month:
Note carefully what this chart shows. Unlike our other charts, which show absolute values, this one compares each month to the same month of the prior year. So the immigrant workforce population grew by 849,000 in August 2021 compared to August 2020. The corresponding increases for June and July were 598,000 and 739,000, respectively. Immigrants are pouring into the workforce — and even faster in August.
For most of 2020, 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.
The immigrant Work Force population started growing again only in December 2020 — arguably when the election results spurred a renewed invasion.
Another displacement metric — the immigrant share of total employment — also rose in August. Our analysis shows 17.26% of jobs last month were held by immigrants — above July’s 17.09%. In contrast, back in August 2020, immigrants held 16.68% of all jobs.
Each 1% rise in immigrant employment share represents a transfer of about 1.5 million jobs from native-born Americans to immigrants.
Note that, after some gyrations, the immigrant share of employment had been falling steadily in the Trump years even before the pandemic started. But, once again, the Trump gains have been wiped out. We predict that the immigrant share will resume its Obama-Era upward march — unless the political climate changes again.
A more detailed picture of how native-born American workers have fared vis-à-vis immigrants is published in Table A-7 of the monthly BLS Report:
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It might appear that one bit of good news was that wage growth rose 4.3%, Y-O-Y, in August.
But this was more than cancelled out by inflation (5.2% Y-O-Y). As Breitbart’s Alex Marlow and Tim Carney have observed in their emailed Breitbart Business Digest:
After years of low inflation, analysts appear to have gotten out of the habit of differentiating between nominal and real gains. For a decade or so, they tended to be not much different from each other. But in the current environment, looking at the nominal numbers only can be misleading. The inflation-adjusted numbers tell us wages are falling, inventories are shrinking, and retail sales are sluggish.
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.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.