How Does Immigration Fit into the Future of the U.S. Labor Market?

Abstract

U.S. GDP growth is anticipated to remain sluggish over the next decade, and slow labor force growth is a key underlying reason. Admitting more immigrants is one way U.S. policymakers can bolster growth in the workforce and the economy. A larger role for immigrant workers also can help mitigate other symptoms of the economy's long-run malaise, such as low productivity growth, declining domestic geographic mobility, and falling entrepreneurship, as well as help address the looming mismatch between the skills U.S. employers want and the skills U.S. workers have. While some might argue that technological change and globalization mean there is less need to admit immigrant workers, such arguments fail to account for both recent data and historical experience. Of course, immigration-like anything else-is not without costs, which are disproportionately borne by the least educated. A plan to increase employment-based immigration as a way to spur economic growth could be paired with new programs to help low-skilled U.S. natives and earlier immigrants so that the benefits of immigration are shared more equitably.

President Trump and Migration at 3

“…The H-2A and H-2B programs admit low-skilled workers to fill seasonal farm and nonfarm jobs, respectively. Between 1996 and 2017, the number of US-born workers 25 and older with less than a high-school diploma declined by almost four million, while the number of foreign-born workers with less than a high-school diploma increased by almost two million (Orrenius et al, 2019). Even though Trump-owned businesses employ H-2A and H-2B guest workers, there have not been any major changes to the H-2A and H-2B guest worker programs, a disappointment for employers who expected Trump to make it easier for them to hire low-skilled guest workers (Martin, 2019).…”

Immigration Crisis: The United States Under President Donald J. Trump

“…President Trump announced in April 2019 that “our country is full.” “Turn around,” Trump advised (Meissner, 2019; Orrenius, Zavodny, & Gullo, 2019; Zengerle, 2019, p. 32). But at the beginning of 2019, there were 7.6 million employment openings in the USA, but just 6.5 million people looking for jobs.…”

“…A wise and humane policy for guest workers, focused on areas of employment needs and with assurances of fair pay and safe working conditions, would be vastly better than the present system that actually encourages the exploitation of desperate and highly vulnerable people. The US economy needs immigrant workers, but it does not need unfairly treated immigrant workers (Meissner, 2019; Orrenius, Zavodny, & Gullo, 2019).…”

An introduction to the economics of immigration in OECD countries

“…On the other hand, immigration supporters see immigrants as economic assets in a global marketplace and maintain that increasing cultural diversity adds to the richness of society. For some policy-makers on the latter side of the issue, immigration is looked to as a mechanism to stimulate economic growth through avenues such as increased productivity and international trade (e.g., Orrenius et al 2019, Advisory Council on Economic Growth 2016). The aspiration is to develop government policy and manage the immigration process so that immigration serves as a mechanism to increase economic welfare, sometimes crudely proxied by gross domestic product (GDP) per capita-as opposed to immigration-induced GDP growth being at a rate proportionate to, or even less than, the rate of immigration-induced population growth.…”