[Puffer Fish]

All the job growth since 2019 has gone to immigrants, less educated men hurting

The media is telling people that the economy is producing more jobs. But why aren't many people feeling that?

just a few highlights from the article:

Job gains are going to immigrants, and keeping young US-born men out of the workforce

Employment of U.S.-born is still below the 2019 level, while immigrant employment is well above

According to the latest numbers, employment of US-born workers is still below 2019 levels.

Of the 2.9 million additional immigrants holding jobs, it is hard to say what share are in the country illegally. Both the Census Bureau, which collects the data, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which analyzes them, are clear that illegal immigrants are included in the CPS, but they don’t break it down by illegal and legal status.

Low-wage US-born workers also create significant costs, but they are already here, while immigrants represent new costs.

It also matters whom these recent immigrants are shutting out of the job market -- specifically, men without a college degree. One of the most serious social problems we face as a country is the decades-long decline in the labor force participation of US-born men.

Today, the labor force participation rate of US-born men without a bachelor’s (ages 18 to 64) stands at 75.6% -- still below the 76.3% rate it was in the fourth quarter of 2019.
And both those figures are far below the 80.6% rate in 2006 and 82.6% in 2000.
Back in the 1960s, nearly 90% of these men were in the labor force.​

Job gains are going to immigrants, and keeping young US-born men out of the workforce, Steven Camarota (Opinion), New York Post, February 13, 2024

related thread: Americans without a college degree are not living as long (in Economics & Capitalism, 10 Oct 2023 )

[late]

New York Post

The Post is what we used to call fishwrap, only good for things like wrapping fish (long time ago, that was common, before plastics did everything).

Krugman won the Nobel in economics:

"The U.S. economy has just gone through an extraordinarily successful year. Many economists (although not all of us) predicted that getting inflation under control would require a recession and an extended period of high unemployment. Instead, inflation has plunged — over the past six months the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of underlying inflation has been running slightly below the target rate of 2 percent — even as the economy has boomed.."
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/13/opin ... onomy.html

Labor force participation has improved, and that includes low wage workers:

"In my @ProSyn commentary, I provide updated evidence on how the tight labor market has raised real wages for low and middle wage workers, and why policies by @JoeBiden
deserve credit."




"Between 2019 and 2022, low-wage workers experienced historically fast real wage growth. The 10th percentile real hourly wage grew 9.0% over the three-year period. This tremendous real wage growth at the lower end of the wage distribution was exceptional, significantly faster than in any other business cycle peak since 1979."
https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2022/

EPI also suggests we raise the federal min wage, improve unemployment insurance, enforce labor standards, and remove obstacles to forming Unions. I agree with all of that.

[Verv]

The Post is what we used to call fishwrap, only good for things like wrapping fish (long time ago, that was common, before plastics did everything).

Krugman won the Nobel in economics:

"The U.S. economy has just gone through an extraordinarily successful year. Many economists (although not all of us) predicted that getting inflation under control would require a recession and an extended period of high unemployment. Instead, inflation has plunged — over the past six months the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of underlying inflation has been running slightly below the target rate of 2 percent — even as the economy has boomed.."
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/13/opin ... onomy.html

Labor force participation has improved, and that includes low wage workers:

"In my @ProSyn commentary, I provide updated evidence on how the tight labor market has raised real wages for low and middle wage workers, and why policies by @JoeBiden
deserve credit."




"Between 2019 and 2022, low-wage workers experienced historically fast real wage growth. The 10th percentile real hourly wage grew 9.0% over the three-year period. This tremendous real wage growth at the lower end of the wage distribution was exceptional, significantly faster than in any other business cycle peak since 1979."
https://www.epi.org/publication/swa-wages-2022/

EPI also suggests we raise the federal min wage, improve unemployment insurance, enforce labor standards, and remove obstacles to forming Unions. I agree with all of that.

(1) I am curious: was any false information presented by the "fishwrap?"

(2) It is entirely possible for economic growth to occur while a disturbing phenomenon of native born US men without college degrees are being left behind, creating a long-term crisis that has to be addressed even if the bottom lines of megacorporations and the elites are doing OK...

Traditionally, it has fallen to Democrats to try to address this but ...

[Unthinking Majority]

(2) It is entirely possible for economic growth to occur while a disturbing phenomenon of native born US men without college degrees are being left behind, creating a long-term crisis that has to be addressed even if the bottom lines of megacorporations and the elites are doing OK...

Traditionally, it has fallen to Democrats to try to address this but ...

Native born US men without college degrees are yucky for corporate America. This includes some friends I have in the US that are African-American. They make too much money, plus those yucky minimum wages. Time to export their jobs overseas and import illegal migrants to do the domestic labour. Even Walmart cashiers are being replaced with machines.

If Democrats don't want a guy like Trump getting elected they might want to do some populism of their own. Too bad Bernie Sanders wasn't elected.

Fortunately recreational drugs are widely available in America so that people have a means to forget about their problems for a short period.

But it's racist to be against illegal immigration or the neoliberal mass exportation of jobs. "Progressives" are so much more caring and compassionate. Just fire an American and give his job away to the lowest bidder, who ends up with little to no legal protections and pay him cash under the table so neither the worker nor company pays any taxes, it's the right thing to do. Slaves back on the plantations, let's do it! Also, human/sex trafficking rocks.

[Verv]

Native born US men without college degrees are yucky for corporate America. This includes some friends I have in the US that are African-American. They make too much money, plus those yucky minimum wages. Time to export their jobs overseas and import illegal migrants to do the domestic labour. Even Walmart cashiers are being replaced with machines.

If Democrats don't want a guy like Trump getting elected they might want to do some populism of their own. Too bad Bernie Sanders wasn't elected.

Fortunately recreational drugs are widely available in America so that people have a means to forget about their problems for a short period.

But it's racist to be against illegal immigration or the neoliberal mass exportation of jobs. "Progressives" are so much more caring and compassionate. Just fire an American and give his job away to the lowest bidder, who ends up with little to no legal protections and pay him cash under the table so neither the worker nor company pays any taxes, it's the right thing to do. Slaves back on the plantations, let's do it! Also, human/sex trafficking rocks.

I can only emphasize that the employment of the native population is vital because it cuts down on those who need government assistance and restores dignity to them. Particularly in the case of American minorities, it's vital, because it restores a sense of equity and justice.

The fact of the matter is that Americans can more than afford to pay a buck more here or there for some basic products that are being made at home or brought to them by companies that employ Americans rather than H1Bs, and that the government would actually save some money: more Americans working is less money spent not only welfare programs, but also on the costs of policing, overdoses, and various other public services that can result from the despair of long-term unemployment.

This isn't about not wanting immigrants in America... It's about really creating a robust American economy where people aren't left behind, and the sort of place where the immigrants that progressively do enter our country through the right channels have more opportunities that are better paying.

As it stands, the birth rates of the middle class globally are just falling dramatically. Blood & soil nationalism is very much dying because the historic ethnic majorities everywhere tend to be more interested in living pleasant lives than struggling to make more opportunities for all those kids they don't have.

The economy's growth already outpaces the birthrate. Legal immigration at a rate that also brings Americans into good paying jobs is just not being done because it is to the benefit of big agriculture industry.

[ingliz]

@Puffer Fish

I have no sympathy for the US worker.

They are not temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

They deserve everything they get when they refuse to organize.

[late]

(1) I am curious: was any false information presented by the "fishwrap?"

(2) It is entirely possible for economic growth to occur while a disturbing phenomenon of native born US men without college degrees are being left behind, creating a long-term crisis that has to be addressed even if the bottom lines of megacorporations and the elites are doing OK...

Traditionally, it has fallen to Democrats to try to address this but ...

Yes.

The chart showed wage growth among blue collar workers. I also mentioned the need for the national minimum wage to rise.

Lastly, I have been banging on about income inequality for years, and that is what you are talking about. Biden is 'addressing' that, but he is also working with the most incompetent House in American history.

While Biden has done a number of things that benefit the little guy, not all his efforts have matured. We are at the beginning of an economic boom that he got started.

[late]

@Puffer Fish

I have no sympathy for the US worker.

They are not temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

They deserve everything they get when they refuse to organize.

Republicans started undermining Unions almost 40 years ago. That is changing, but suppression is not refusal..

[Tainari88]

@Puffer Fish

I have no sympathy for the US worker.

They are not temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

They deserve everything they get when they refuse to organize.

Ingliz, class consciousness is very different in the USA. Many workers who are WASP people are individualistic to the extreme. They are almost allergic to doing things as a class (working class). The vast majority of Americans are in the extreme of individuality in thinking. Most Americans think of themselves as being middle class. It is an embarrassment to be underclass or working class. It is not Europe. It is not England or Malta in that sense. The Americans are all ashamed of being poor because that is the fucking worst thing you can be in American society. You really only get respect being middle class and above.

The few times that American workers organize and do it surrounding a very defined class identity they KICK ASS. And they do it extremely well. But, again they have been taught to eschew class identities. The Americans eschew everything that in almost any other nation is embraced and understood. That means class identity, ethnic identity and group identities. The US culture is about rugged individualism, belief in capitalism, no one is poor or working class, and everyone is some generic ethnicity that no one pays attention to because the reason most European background immigrants came to the USA was to FORGET THEIR PAST. They assimilate into what the generic American shit is about. Consumerism, buying property, cars and bank accounts. If you are Maltese, or Polish, or Italian or whatever? It is a long-forgotten cobweb in some back memories...no longer even thought about. Americans are allergic to history and working on an accurate picture of history.

It is about making it. Making money. And speaking English only. Innovating. Profiting. And being middle class and above. Do not care about the past. EVER. Move on as a single individual and do what needs to be done to be economically successful. That is it. End of the thought process.

Because unions threatened capital? They basically destroyed that. Holding on to histories, cultures, original languages, and group identities and class identities is a big problem for capital in the USA: Got to pit groups against each other and the fastest way is cutthroat competition Ingliz.