September Jobs: Immigrant Displacement of American Workers Reaches ANOTHER New High

The shutdown-delayed employment report for September, which was supposed to be released about three weeks ago, found that only 148,000 jobs were added over the month. Even this may be too optimistic, as it reflects the situation prior to the government shutdown. Government employment actually rose in September.

Since January, employers have added an average of 177,000 net new jobs per month. The rate slipped over the summer, to only 143,000 per month. Unmentioned in Main Stream Media accounts of this disappointing development: more than half of the new positions will be needed just to absorb new legal immigrants.

This job growth slowdown should worry the Obama Administration, but it apparently it doesn’t. Indeed, the push to legalize millions of illegal aliens already working in the U.S. and increase legal immigration from its current record levels only intensified after the government re-opened for business. As we reported a few weeks ago, S.744 would add a minimum of 33 million more lifetime work permits in its first decade than would occur under current law.

Our analysis of the “other” employment report—of households rather than businesses—shows how desperate the situation has already become for native-born American workers.

In September:

Total employment rose by 133,000, or by 0.1%
Native-born American employment fell by 73,000, or by -0.1%
Foreign-born employment rose by 206,000, or by 0.9%

September was the second successive month in which native-born American workers actually held fewer jobs in absolute terms, while foreign-born workers enjoyed robust job growth...

From September 2009 to September 2013 the share of total jobs held by immigrants rose from 15.72% to 16.62%.

Had the immigrant share of employment remained at its September 2009 level, 1.30 million more native-born American workers would have been employed this September. The overall unemployment rate would have been about a percentage point lower than 7.2% reported by the Labor Department...