Immigrants Account for Half of New Workers

Date: Tuesday, December 03, 2002 11:52 AM

H-1B and JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER

www.ZaZona.com

This Washington Post article contains the usual propaganda that our economy
couldn't function without immigrant labor. If immigrant workers are so vital
to our economy why are we doing so poorly as of late?

There are some startling statistics worth viewing, such as the fact eight of
10 new male workers in the decade were immigrants.

This study mentioned "puzzling decades-long decline in the share of
U.S.-born men in the workforce." They speculated on several reasons that
this is happening but never did mention that the huge influx of immigrant
workers might be displacing them. They even have the gall to claim that
immigrants saved the male workforce from making only marginal gains.

Anirban Basu said that the immigrants helped to plug the "gaps that would
have otherwise persisted in the labor force, especially in the high-tech
sector and among younger workers." He didn't mention H-1B but we know what
he is talking about, don't we?

The Business Roundtable sponsored this study. For more on these Skunks go
http://www.zazona.com/shameh1b/Skunks.htm#BRT

I updated the Skunks info on the Center for Labor Market Studies. Go there
to see a classic quote by
Paul Harrignton.
http://www.zazona.com/shameh1b/Skunks.htm#CLMS

I quoted Andrew Sum at:
http://www.zazona.com/shameh1b/Quotes.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61586-2002Dec1.html

Immigrants Account for Half of New Workers
Report Calls Them Increasingly Needed For Economic Growth

By D'Vera Cohn
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 2, 2002; Page A01

A new study of census data concludes that recent immigrants were critical to
the nation's economic growth in the past decade, accounting for half of the
new wage earners who joined the labor force in those years.

The effect was particularly large among men: Eight of 10 new male workers in
the decade were immigrants who arrived during that time, according to the
report by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University.

New immigrants accounted for 76 percent of the labor force growth in
Maryland and 44 percent in Virginia. In the District, where the workforce
declined, immigrants prevented further shrinkage.

The Northeastern University report, scheduled for release this week, offers
powerful new evidence of the growing impact of immigrants in American
society. Earlier data from the 2000 Census showed a record number of new
arrivals during the 1990s that prevented population loss in some cities and
rural areas. The newly analyzed workforce numbers show that immigration also
is redrawing the profile of the U.S. workforce, in some cases transforming
entire industries.

More than 13 million immigrants came to the United States from 1990 to
2001 -- some legally and some illegally -- drawn by the healthy economy and
family ties. The report said 8 million immigrants joined the labor force,
which means they were either working or looking for work, over a period when
the total number of new workers was 16 million.

The impact on the workforce was significantly larger than in the previous
decades. In the 1970s, for example, immigrants accounted for 10 percent of
the labor force growth. It increased to roughly a quarter in the '80s before
expanding to half in the '90s.

Even so, 86 percent of the workforce is American-born.

For decades, the nation's immigration policy has been a subject of intense
debate, with critics saying the large numbers strain schools and other
government services and take jobs from American-born workers. One of the
authors of the Northeastern study argues that the research indicates the
opposite: The U.S. economy would have stumbled in the past decade without
the new arrivals, and most immigrants contribute more in taxes than they use
in services.

"The American economy absolutely needs immigrants," said Andrew Sum,
director of the labor market center. "I realize some workers have been hurt
by this, and some people get very angry when I say this, but our economy has
become more dependent on immigrant labor than at any time in the last 100
years."

Sum said many of the new immigrant workers, possibly half, are here without
legal papers, meaning that the immigrants have an uncertain future and that
the economy is dependent on people in a legal no man's land.

The center's report was commissioned by the Business Roundtable, a group of
corporate chief executives.

A study released last week underscores that the immigration trend seemingly
is here to stay, absent a drastic change in policy. The Center for
Immigration Studies in Washington, which favors limits on immigration, said
that even the economic downturn and a crackdown on illegal entry since the
2001 terrorist attacks have barely pinched the pace of arrivals. Two million
immigrants have arrived in the United States since the 2000 Census,
according to Census Bureau survey data quoted in the center's report.

The Baltimore-Washington region gained 175,000 new immigrants in the two
years since the 2000 Census, the report said. That represents an escalation
of the pace over the previous decade.

Susan Traiman, director of the workforce education initiative at the
Business Roundtable, said the Northeastern report sheds new light on the
underpinnings of the vigorous '90s economy. "We would not have been able to
have this economic growth without the growth in the workforce that was
supplied by immigrants," she said.

More than a third of the new immigrants were employed in blue-collar
occupations, but nearly one in four held a technical, managerial or
professional job. They were concentrated in certain sectors, especially
manufacturing, retail trade, business and repair services, and personal and
entertainment services. But they also have an above-average share of the
nation's jobs in engineering, computer science and physical science.

The impact of new immigrant workers varied by age group and region. Without
new immigrants, the labor force would have experienced no growth in New
England and the New York region. In the fast-growing southern and Rocky
Mountain states, however, which drew population from elsewhere in the
country, immigrants had less of an effect.

Immigrants also accounted for all the growth among workers under 35. That is
explained by a drop in U.S. birthrates in the 1970s and the resulting dip in
the U.S.-born population in that young age group. But even among those ages
35 to 44 -- the youngest baby boomers -- new immigrants supplied a third of
the growth in the labor force.

Anirban Basu, chief economist of the Regional Economic Studies Institute at
Towson University, said the arrival of immigrants "helped fill in some gaps
that would have otherwise persisted in the labor force," especially in the
high-tech sector and among younger workers.

"Not only did immigrants add to the raw total of the number of workers, but
they added in very meaningful ways," he said.

The effect was particularly noticeable among male workers, in part because
of a puzzling decades-long decline in the share of U.S.-born men in the
workforce. One factor is early retirements; another is that male high school
dropouts are less likely to work than they were in the past.

Had it not been for immigrants, the report said, "the nation's entire male
labor force would have grown only marginally over the past decade, and male
labor shortages would likely have been widespread in many areas of the
country, especially the Northeast and Pacific regions."

Among women, three in 10 new workers were recent immigrants, a much smaller
proportion than among men. That's because U.S.-born women are continuing to
enter the workforce in larger numbers, the report points out, while
immigrant women are much less likely to work.

The report cited evidence that the entry of many poorly educated immigrants
into the workforce has held back wages of the lowest-paid American-born
workers. And Sum said U.S.-born workers can be shunted aside when the
economy slackens because employers often prefer to hire immigrants,
believing that they work harder.

Nine in 10 new immigrants went to work for private industry, having a
profound effect on some companies. At the 7-Eleven nationwide convenience
store chain, for example, a heavily immigrant workforce allowed aggressive
expansion in the 1990s, when the company added several hundred stores each
year, spokeswoman Margaret Chabris said.

Its increasingly foreign-born workforce required the company to adapt. In
mid-decade, 7-Eleven added a unit to its training program to "teach the
nuances of providing good customer service in America," she said. "We teach
foreign-born employees from certain cultures that American customers want to
be looked in the eye. They want their change handed to them rather than
being put on the counter."

The Northeastern University report was based on a broader definition of
immigrant than the government uses, including not only people born in
foreign countries but also those from Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands
and other U.S. island territories. People born in those territories
accounted for only 368,000 of the 13.5 million people deemed immigrants in
the report. The workforce numbers were for civilians only, not the military.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

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