Foreigners Take Nearly One-Third
of All New Jobs

liens are taking nearly one-third of all new jobs created in the U.S. economy as it struggles for recovery, according to a new report issued last month.

The study by the Pew Hispanic Center found that immigrant non-citizens claimed 378,496 jobs out of a net increase of 1.3 million new jobs from the first three months of 2003 through the same period this year.

The large share of those jobs - 28.5 percent - going to aliens in the U.S. surprised researchers because economists used to believe that non-citizens normally account for less than 10 percent of all employed workers.

The report, prepared by labor economist Rakesh Kochhar for Pew, noted that foreigners are benefitting disproportionately from the new multiculturalist economy of free trade and mass immigration.
"The proportion of new jobs captured by non-citizens was ... much larger than their share of overall employment," the report said. It emphasized that "non-citizens are benefitting disproportionately from the turnaround in the labor market."

The Pew Hispanic Center specializes in social and economic research on Latinos living in the U.S. The data used by the center to analyze employment trends did not distinguish between legal or illegal immigrant job holders.

The report suggested that the beneficial political impact for President Bush from increased jobs may be dampened by the fact that aliens are reaping disproportionate rewards.

Robert Suro, director of the center, told the Los Angeles Times that "the turnaround is being fueled to a substantial extent by the demand for immigrant labor. And as a result, a substantial chunk of the new jobs are going to people who are not voters."

The demand for "immigrant labor" is, of course, a demand by employers for cheap labor.

The high proportion of new jobs going to immigrants indicates profound changes underway in America's new free trade economy. Most of the new jobs being created appear in categories requiring low-skilled workers and paying low wages. By contrast, past economic recoveries, "have been marked by growth in industrial jobs that pay above-average wages," the Times said.

Jared Berstein, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, told the Times that his research supports the theory that "the occupations that are gaining are on the low end."

Both Republican and Democrat parties have urged adoption of policies allowing for more immigration to satisfy corporate appetites for cheap labor. President Bush has urged a gradual amnesty for millions of illegal aliens under the guise of a six-year "guest worker" program, and Democrats have argued for a blanket grant of green cards to illegal aliens.

The Pew report suggested that the most recently arriving Hispanic immigrants have captured the most jobs, helping to keep wages down by flooding the labor market. The report said "the employment picture has not delivered higher wages to workers overall and to Latinos in particular."

The median weekly earnings for Hispanic immigrant workers dropped from $402 in the first quarter of 2003 to $395 during the same period this year, said the report.

"The growth in the supply of labor has surely contributed to keeping wages down," said Pew economist Kochhar.