rug company. She earns enough to pay rent, buy groceries, gas up her car — and send money home to her parents.
More workers filling more jobs and spending more money has helped drive economic growth and create still-more job openings. The availability of immigrant workers eased the pressure on companies to sharply raise wages and to then pass on their higher labor costs via higher prices that feed inflation. Though U.S. inflation remains elevated, it has plummeted from its levels of two years ago.
The immigration boom was a surprise. In 2019, the Congressional Budget Office had estimated that net immigration — arrivals minus departures — would equal about 1 million in 2023. The actual number, the CBO said in a January update, was 3.3 million. At the Flood Brothers farm in Maine’s “dairy capital’’ of Clinton, foreign-born workers make up half the staff of nearly 50, feeding the cows, tending crops and helping collect the milk.For every unemployed person in Maine, after all, there are two job openings, on average.
Trump has repeatedly attacked Biden's immigration policy over the surge in migrants at the Southern border. Only about 27% of the 3.3 million foreigners who entered the United States last year did so through as “lawful permanent residents’’ or on temporary visas, according to Edelberg and Watson's analysis. The rest — 2.