We Need More Low-Skilled Immigrant Labor, Not Less

 

Our economy is chugging along at 2% annual growth of GDP, not spectacular but not awful either. The unemployment rate has dropped to 4.3%, and low-wage earners are beginning to see decent pay raises. Furthermore there are good indications that GDP growth may rise in the near future to at least 2.5%, see here and here.
As growth increases, unemployment continues to drop, and wages increase more quickly, severe labor shortages in certain job categories are likely to develop.  As the New York Times economics reporter, Eduardo Porter, points out, “The Danger from Low-Skilled Immigrants: Not Having Them.”


Consider:

  • Eight of the fifteen occupations expected to experience the fastest growth – personal care and home health aides, food preparation workers, janitors and the like – require no schooling at all.
  • Low-skilled immigration does not just knock less-educated Americans out of their jobs, it often leads to the creation of new jobs – at better wages.
  • The strawberry crop in California owes its existence to cheap immigrant pickers. They are sustaining better paid American workers in the strawberry patch to market chain who would have to find other employment if the U.S. imported the strawberries directly from Mexico.

  • The benefits of immigration come from occupational specialization. Immigrants concentrated in more manual jobs free up natives to specialize in more communication-intensive (English speaking) jobs.
  • The average American worker is more likely to lose than to gain from immigration restrictions. Halting immigration completely would reduce annual economic growth by .3%.
  • The Pew Research Center estimates that about 30,000 unauthorized immigrants work in Nebraska, 3.2% of Nebraska’s total labor force. They are heavily represented in a handful of industries, making up 18% of Nebraska’s construction workers, 9% of production workers, and 5% of farm laborers.  With an unemployment rate hovering around 3%, the Nebraska economy would be severely stressed without these immigrant workers.

Conclusion. Both in Nebraska and nationwide, the U.S. economy has a strong need for immigrant workers. An adequate guest worker visa program is badly needed to provide legal status to these workers who are so critical to the success of the U.S. economy.

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2 thoughts on “We Need More Low-Skilled Immigrant Labor, Not Less

  1. Your first bullet point after your figure which states that having immigrant labor “frees up natives” to take more communication intensive jobs, doesn’t make any sense to me. What is stopping them from taking them now? The only impact I can imagine is having the immigrants doing the manual work at lower wages, that make the communication jobs, that fewer immigrants can do effectively, pay better. With less immigrants, the lower skilled, but harder manual wage jobs would have to pay better to get employees which would help solve low wage issues that minimum wage increase advocates are trying to get passed.

    • In Nebraska (where I live), and other states as well, there is a severe labor shortage. The work that immigrants do is often hard physical labor that natives don’t want to do and are able to avoid because there are plenty of other jobs they can do.

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