May Jobs: Obama-Era Immigrant Displacement Of American Workers Resumes

The economy added a lackluster 217,000 jobs in May, about in line with what economists had expected. The unemployment rate remained at 6.3%.

Yet the MSM teased out a number of Happy Days Are Here Again factoids:

Factoid #1: For the fourth month in a row, employers added more than 200,000 positions, the first time that has happened in more than 14 years. [217,000 Jobs Added, Nudging Payrolls to Levels Before the Crisis, By Nelson D. Schwartz, New York Times, June 6, 2014]

Reality check: As many as 90,000 of those jobs are needed just to absorb the new legal immigrants arriving each month. When you consider that 8 million native-born American workers were unemployed in May, and millions more have left the labor force entirely, 200,000 per month is, in fact, shockingly low.

Factoid #2: Total employment, as measured by the Establishment Employment Survey, was a record 138.463 million in May, surpassing the peak reached before the economy collapsed in 2008. [Another Great Recession level fades as U.S. passes employment peak,, By Steve Goldstein, Marketwatch Capitol Report, June 6, 2014]

Reality check: Not since the Great Depression has it taken so long to recover all the jobs lost during a downturn.

But back then, immigration and native-born population growth was at a standstill. Stagnant population growth ameliorated the impact of stagnant job growth. By contrast, U.S. population has grown by about 12.5 million since 2008—most of it due to new immigrants and their U.S.-born children...