Foreign-Born Workforce, American Worker Displacement Surge After Post-Election Hiatus

Job growth recovered in April, according to data released Friday by the Labor Department. An impressive 211,000 jobs were created last month, pushing the unemployment rate down to 4.4%—the lowest in more than 10 years. The bad news, unreported in the Main Stream Media: immigrants captured all of that gain, and then some. And the immigrant share of the workforce rebounded. This abruptly erases what had appeared to be one of the Trump Administration’s few tangible successes—perhaps temporarily, but what’s going on?

Note that economists claim to be perplexed that strong job growth has gone on for as long as it has without out triggering strong wage growth. (Wages rose a mediocre 0.3% in April.)  The “other” employment survey, of households rather than employers, provides a likely answer: Renewed displacement of native-born American workers by immigrants (legal and illegal) willing to work for less...

Foreign-born workers held 17.20% of all jobs in April—up from 16.94% in March. This undoes the gains made during Trump’s first two months, when immigrants appeared to be retreating from the labor force...