Native born Americans have continued lagging behind foreign born workers in the United States’ workforce over the last decade, federal data finds.
Bureau of Labor Statistics data obtained by the Wall Street Journal reveals that while the foreign born workforce in the U.S. economy hits the highest level since 1996 because of the country’s mass legal immigration policy, foreign born workers also are far exceeding native born Americans in terms of labor market growth.
Over the last 10 years, the number of foreign born workers who entered the labor market increased 17.2 percent. At the same time, the number of native born Americans who entered the labor market increased by less than three percent. This indicates that in the last decade, the foreign born workforce in the U.S. economy grew more than six times the rate of the native born workforce.
As Breitbart News reported, legal immigration levels, where 1.2 million mostly low-skilled legal immigrants and hundreds of thousands of foreign visa workers are admitted to the country annually, have driven the number of foreign born workers in the U.S. to its highest level in more than two decades.
Today, foreign born workers make up 17.5 percent of the U.S. workforce and remain undercutting the wages of America’s native born working and middle class.
In 2018, foreign-born workers were cheaper to hire for employers, earning a median weekly salary of less than $760. At the same time, native born American workers’ median weekly salary was $910. The data, though, found that while native-born Americans’ wages have been largely stagnant, foreign-born workers have seen their wages rise.
Though there continue to be nearly 12 million Americans who want a full-time job but are unemployed, underemployed, or out of the labor force entirely, the U.S. has continued admitting more than a million legal immigrants a year to compete for working and middle class jobs against these sidelined Americans.
Extensive research by economists like George Borjas and analyst Steven Camarota reveals that the country’s current mass legal immigration system burdens U.S. taxpayers and America’s working and middle class while redistributing about $500 billion in wealth every year to major employers and newly arrived immigrants. Similarly, research has revealed how Americans’ wages are crushed by the country’s high immigration levels.
For every one-percent increase in the immigrant portion of American workers’ occupations, their weekly wages are cut by about 0.5 percent, Camarota finds. This means the average native-born American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by perhaps 8.75 percent since 17.5 percent of the workforce is foreign born.
In a state like Florida, where immigrants make up about 25.4 percent of the labor force, American workers have their weekly wages reduced by about 12.5 percent. In California, where immigrants make up 34 percent of the labor force, American workers’ weekly wages are reduced by potentially 17 percent.
Likewise, every one-percent increase in the immigrant portion of low-skilled U.S. occupations reduces wages by about 0.8 percent. Should 15 percent of low-skilled jobs be held by foreign-born workers, it would reduce the wages of native-born American workers by perhaps 12 percent.
At current legal immigration rates, about one-in-six U.S. residents will have been born outside of the country by 2060, the Census Bureau has found. The foreign-born population in the U.S. is expected to reach 69 million in the next four decades — a boon to Wall Street investors, real estate developers, and big business executives who increasingly profit from more consumers and cheaper workers.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
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