VDAWDI Vindicated—Immigration Hitting American Workers Hard
So gargantuan is America's post-1965 immigration disaster that there is now an immigration dimension to every public issue. Nowhere is this more so than in employment—and nowhere is the phenomenon more pressing, given that unemployment has now reached a level (8.5 percent) not seen since 1983—and is projected to reach double digits by year end.
As usual, the federal government's statistics on immigration's impact of on employment are so fragmentary that it almost appears someone doesn't want to know. Specifically, it does not release monthly data on immigrant vs. native-born American employment.
Because of this malfeasance, in 2004 we unveiled our proprietary effort to track American worker displacement: the VDARE.com American Worker Displacement Index (VDAWDI). We tracked monthly growth of Hispanic versus non-Hispanic employment, expressing both as an index number of 100 as of the start of the Bush Administration in January 2001. We used Hispanics as a proxy for immigrant employment because such a high fraction of working age Hispancs (54 percent) a are immigrants.
VDAWDI rose dramatically from January 2001 to late 2007, when it reached 124.1.. Then it stalled and finally declined when employment collapsed in late 2008.
But despite the recent decline, Hispanic (= immigrant) employment is still (as of March 2009) up a whopping 22 percent. In contrast, non-Hispanic (= American) employment was actually lower than it was at the start of the Bush administration.
Once a year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics does release data on immigrant employment. It did so on March 26th of this year.
In general, this foreign-born employment data confirm our long-standing estimates of American Worker Displacement. If anything, we were too conservative. Specifically, in 2008, immigrant employment was, on average, 33.7% higher than in 2000, whereas native-born employment was only 3.8% higher. This compares to VDAWDI's figures: a 22 percent gain for immigrants versus a slight decline for natives from January 2001 to March 2009.
Table 1 Native- v. Foreign-born Employment, 2000-2008
Total (1,000s)
Change from
prior year
% change from
prior year
Year
US-born
Foreign-born
US-born
Foreign-born
US-born
Foreign-born
2000
118,254
16,954
492
1,228
0.4%
7.8%
2001
117,627
17,445
(627)
491
-0.5%
2.9%
2002
117,546
18,991
(81)
1,546
-0.1%
8.9%
2003
118,005
19,731
459
740
0.4%
3.9%
2004
118,997
20,256
992
525
0.8%
2.7%
2005
120,708
21,022
1,711
766
1.4%
3.8%
2006
122,202
22,225
1,494
1,203
1.2%
5.7%
2007
123,079
22,967
877
742
0.7%
3.3%
2008
122,703
22,660
(376)
(307)
-0.3%
-1.3%
Change,
2000-2008
4,449
5,706
% change,
2000-2008
3.8%
33.7%
Source: BLS, "Foreign-born Workers: Labor Force Characteristics in 2008," News Release, March 26, 2009. (2007, 2008) PDF