National Data | October Job Data Show Record Immigrant Displacement Of Americans

11/03/2006

The conventional wisdom is that employment picture brightened in October. Some 92,000 new payroll jobs were added, and job growth for August and September was revised upward by a cumulative 139,000. October’s unemployment rate, 4.4 percent, was the lowest in more than five years.

For what it’s worth, this good news probably comes too late to help Republicans in the federal elections on Tuesday.

And maybe that’s fair. From our perspective here at VDARE.COM, the October job pop was really a bust.

We refer, of course, to the "other" employment survey, of households rather than businesses, which gives some indication of the immigrant share of job growth. The household survey showed that a whopping 437,000 new positions were created in October. But the gains were overwhelmingly skewed toward Hispanics — our proxy for immigrants, because about 40 percent of them are foreign-born.

Here are month’s gains by racial group:

Total: +437,000 (+0.30 percent)

Hispanic: +292,000 (+1.49 percent)

Non-Hispanic: +145,000 (+0.12 percent)

More than two-thirds of October’s new jobs went to Hispanics, who represent just 14 percent of the U.S. labor force.

As for that declining unemployment rate, we notice that

Among white males, unemployment actually rose — to 3.0 percent in October from 2.9 percent the prior month.

Similarly, Black male unemployment rose — to 7.9 percent in October from 7.7 percent in September.

Yet the same seasonally unadjusted figures show that unemployment declined among Hispanic males — to 3.4 percent in October from 3.7 percent in September.

This is hardly new news. As our readers know, we have compared month-to-month changes in Hispanic and non-Hispanic employment for years. Since the start of Bush II’s administration (January 2001) Hispanic employment has risen 3.730 million, or 23.1 percent. Just 3.781 million jobs were filled by non-Hispanics, a gain of only 3.1 percent.

October’s figures pushed VDARE.COM’s American Worker Displacement Index — VDAWDI, the ratio of Hispanic to non-Hispanic job growth during the Bush years — to a record high.

Unfortunately, the government does not publish monthly data on immigrant employment. Because so many Hispanics are immigrants and the children of immigrants, Hispanic employment is the best proxy we have for impact of foreign-born workers on month-to-month employment change.

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

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