U.S. employers continue to create jobs exceeding economists’ estimates, and immigration may be a major reason why.
The influx of immigrants has not only boosted jobs but also consumer spending by 0.2 percentage points in 2023 and gross domestic product by 0.1 percentage points each year since 2022, according to economists Wendy Edelberg, director of The Hamilton Project, and Tara Watson, director of the Center for Economic Security and Opportunity, Brookings.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has repeatedly charged that his city has been overburdened with the “national problem” of migrants entering the United States, and has pleaded with President Biden to help cover the $12 billion cost of housing them over the next three years. On Capitol Hill last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell acknowledged the advantages of the immigrants, while trying not to sound political.
Participation in the labor force among 25- to 54-year-old U.S.-born men without a high school diploma declined by 5 percentage points between 2000 and 2023, according to an analysis of Census Bureau data by the Center for Immigration Studies.