Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Last Century's immigration policy no longer works

To continue the current immigration policy and save the Banking Institutions, well need about 13 million jobs -- right away. Since that isn't likely, maybe we should re-evaluate immigration policy.





BLS Employment Growth over NonInstCiv Population Growth by Decade:
1950s
Population Growth = 11,516,000
Employment Growth = 7,215,000 (63%)

1960s
Population Growth = 19,449,000
Employment Growth = 13,862,000 (71%)

1970s (Full blown depression in Mexico)
Population Growth = 30,811,000
Employment Growth = 21,224,000 (69%)

1980s
Population Growth = 20,865,000
Employment Growth = 17,685,000 (85%)

1990s
Population Growth = 21,667,000
Employment Growth = 16,998,000 (78%)

2000s (to June 2008)
Population Growth = 24,795,000
Employment Growth = 11,953,000 (48%)

Data: BLS - CPS
Downloaded: July 2008

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Does employment growth now lag population growth so sharply because of offshoring of formerly U.S.-based jobs? Every day I can find reports of U.S. firms closing down business functions, departments, divisions, factories and moving that work to an offshore location or Mexico. Perhaps you have documented the real impact of offshoring on U.S. employment - and contrary to the economists claims about free trade benefits, we may be losing the game.

weaver said...

I believe that offshoring is a symptom and often a scapegoate that is used to obscure the true problem.

When people are forced to migrate, money does not exchange hands freely (the true benifit of trade).

Without the glut of labor that occurs from unregulated immigration, manufacturing workers would have moved to construction or (much better paying) hospitality jobs.

Additionally, excessive immigration inflates our housing costs to levels that make our salary requirement too high to compete in the global market.

The illegal immigration problem could easily be solved if employers were not allowed to deduct illegal wages from gross-income. Yet the Fed refuses to consider employer sanctions.

The companies who offshore are offered special non-immigrant long-term visas. These "process" jobs should have gone to Americans -- I'm pretty sure if we were working together within our respective countries, we would all be more prosperous and cooperative today.