24,914,000 Foreign-Born People Employed In U.S.

The number of foreign-born people who are employed in the U.S. increased last month, and is now three times the number of unemployed native-born Americans, according to data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In August, 24,914,000 foreign-born workers held jobs in the U.S., up by 204,000 from July’s total of 24,710,000 employed foreign-born people, according to the Labor Department’s unadjusted numbers.

The unemployment rate for the foreign-born went down from 5.2 percent in July, to 4.4 percent last month. That leaves an additional 1,142,000 foreign-born people in the U.S. unemployed and actively searching for jobs also sought by Americans.

The growing number of foreign-born people now living in the United States outpaced their growing employment numbers. In August, there were 14,234,000 foreign-born non-working people — such as retirees, sick, students and unemployed — who were living in the United States. That’s up by 178,000 over July’s level.

The native-born population in August, meanwhile, had an unemployment rate of 5.3 percent. That percentage adds up to 7,021,000 unemployed native-born Americans, although down from 7,436,000 unemployed native-born people in July.

But the number of native-born people out of the labor force also grew. Back in July,  78,293,000 native-born Americans were not in the labor force. In August, the number grew by 1.1 million to reach a total of 79,472,000 native-born people out of the labor force. This huge group includes normal retirees, disabled people and students, but also many millions of Americans who give up looking for jobs.

The BLS reports that 124,314,000 native-born workers had jobs.

Since the start of the recession in December of 2007, the foreign-born population has outpaced the native born population in net job growth.

While the native-born population has netted 790,000 additional jobs since December 2007, foreign-born employment has grown by about 2.1 million — even though the native-born non-institutional population increased more than twice as much as the foreign-born population, by 12.7 million to 5.2 million foreign-born people.