National Data | March Jobs: A Disaster For Native-Born Americans And Immigrants Alike

By Edwin S. Rubenstein

04/06/2013

Memory Hole Moment for the Amnesty/ Immigration Surge Crowd: the March jobs numbers were “terrible” (Michael Tomasky writing in the Daily Beast. So it must be true!)

For the past three years, employment growth has popped up smartly in January and February, only to stagnate in the spring. True to form, the 2013 March job numbers were enormously disappointing. The economy gained only 88,000 jobs, compared with 268,000 in February, according to the Labor Department. It was the slowest job growth since June, and less than half of what economists expected.

This is the job environment into which the Gang of Eight wants to unleash an Amnesty/ Immigration Surge.

There were 9,956,000 unemployed native-born Americans in March. If March’s job growth rate persists — and if the native-born were miraculously to get all the new positions — it will take 59 months, nearly five years, for the native-born unemployment rate to reach the 4% level considered “full employment” by most economists.

And that would indeed be a miracle. Because about 90,000 legal immigrants arrive every month. That means that essentially all the jobs created last month would be needed just to absorb new legal entrants.

March 2013 was a disaster for native-born Americans and immigrants alike. The Household Employment Survey, which records the ethnicity and nativity of respondents, found across-the-board job declines.

In March:

• Total employment fell by 206,000, or by -0.14%
• Native-born employment fell by 130,000, or by -0.11%
• Foreign-born employment fell by 76,000, or by -0.33%

In tabular form:

In terms of native-born Americans vs. immigrants, March 2013 is an anomaly. But the long-term trend, of native-born workers gaining jobs at rates well below that of their foreign-born competitors, remains intact.

This is made clear in our New VDARE.com American Worker Displacement Index (NVDAWDI) . It tracks native-born and foreign-born employment growth for every month since January 2009.

Native-born employment growth is the blue line, immigrant employment growth is in pink, and NVAWDI — the ratio of immigrant to native-born job growth — is yellow. To chart American worker displacement, we set both native-born and immigrant employment in January 2009 at 100.0.

Since then:

• Foreign-born employment increased by 1.646 million, or by 7.6%. The immigrant employment index rose from 100.0 to 107.6
• Native-born employment declined by 581,000 — or by -0.5%.The native-born employment index fell from 100.0 to 99.5.
• NVDAWDI (the ratio of immigrant to native-born employment growth indexes) rose from 100.0 to 108.1 (100X(107.6/ 99.5)

Since President Obama took office, native-born job losses are about one-third the immigrant job gains. Put differently, during the Obama years an average of one native-born worker has become unemployed per every three foreign-born workers added to the U.S. workforce.

From February to March of this year, NVAWDI fell from 108.4 to 108.1 — essentially unchanged amidst the long-term American worker displacement trend.

American worker displacement is also confirmed in the published figures for March 2012 and March 2013:

Over the past 12 months:

• Immigrants gained 412,000 jobs, a 1.8% increase; native-born workers gained 873,000 positions, a 0.7% increase. ADVANTAGE IMMIGRANTS
• The immigrant unemployment rate fell by 1.3 percentage points — or by 14.9%; native unemployment fell by 0.6 percentage points — a 7.2% decline. ADVANTAGE IMMIGRANTS, IN ADDITION:
• The labor force participation rate — a measure of worker confidence — declined for both immigrants and natives. However the immigrant participation rate — 65.8% in March — is well above the native-born rate (62.6%.) ADVANTAGE IMMIGRANTS

Last week’s New York Times assured readers that illegal Mexican immigration is thing of the past: “All across Mexico’s ruddy central plains, most of the people who could go north already have.” It added that “…. You have a dangerous trip that costs a lot more money, and there has been strong growth all over Latin America.” [In Mexican Villages, Few Are Left to Dream of U.S., by Damien Cave, April 2, 2013.]

Maybe. But VDARE.com has long said that legal immigration is ultimately the more pressing problem. The latest employment report shows that over the past 12 months the foreign-born labor force grew four times faster than the native-born labor force: 0.4% versus 0.1%. Legal entrants undoubtedly contributed to most of this disparity.

This is bad news for any native-born American looking for work.

Wake up, Washington. We need an immigration moratorium.

Edwin S. Rubenstein is President of ESR Research Economic Consultants in Indianapolis.

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