Help wanted signs, which became a frequent sight in restaurant and shop windows by
the end of 2020, are still common fixtures throughout the nation. A recent article
in the Wall Street Journal focused on the growing number of employers who are finding
employees in migrant communities.1The article highlighted the stories of several immigrants who came to the United States
from Latin America after hearing about a high-paying job on social media. Some intend
only to work in the United States for a few years, saving their earnings to invest
in a new business enterprise in their home country upon their return. Anecdotal evidence
shows that the wage gap between domestic workers and immigrants has narrowed. Employers
are paying high wages and offering large money bonuses to anyone willing to work,
and immigrants are currently keeping many U.S. businesses afloat."
These stories led to me to investigate some of the government databases typically
used to track trends in employment and immigration. Do we see evidence of rising employment
in service and construction industries? Do we see increasing immigration in the population
counts?
Figure 1 shows recent trends in the number of workers employed in construction, service
industries, agriculture, and manufacturing. Data come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
I selected only industries that traditionally hire large shares of immigrants with
relatively little education. Employment in the service industry took a dive during
the lockdowns 2020 but has grown steadily since. It is now similar to pre-pandemic
levels, and employment in construction, agriculture, and manufacturing changed very
little from 2018 to 2022.
Why are employers having difficulty finding workers? The answer to this question is
still somewhat elusive. Many workers quit their jobs in 2020 in what was coined the
“great reassessment”. Workers are reassessing their career goals and work preferences.
Workers might be choosier than they were before the pandemic, and apparently, they
can afford to be. Although employment growth was sluggish in the latter half of 2022,
the unemployment rate is currently only 3.4%, the lowest it has been in more than
53 years.2
Has the historically low unemployment rate, along with high wages and offers of money
bonuses in entry-level jobs, attracted more immigrants to the United States? The primary
source of data on U.S. population and migration is the American Community Survey (ACS).
The ACS randomly selects households to participate in the survey each year, so that
we can track population trends between censuses. Figure 2 plots the number of immigrants
by country of origin from 1960-2021. This figure comes from the Migration Policy Institute
and is based on a combination of data from the ACS and U.S. Censuses (2020 was excluded
due to poor representation of sampling during the pandemic). Notably, Mexico is the
primary source of immigrants to the United States, but the number of immigrants from
Mexico has been declining since 2010. Although we hear about increasing border traffic
since the start of 2021, we do not observe a sizable increase in immigration from
Latin America in the ACS.
Figure 2: Immigrant Populations (Source: Migration Policy Institute)
Is the ACS, which has been our primary source of data on immigration for many years,
able to adequately sample and count immigrant populations? To the extent that immigrants
often live in dense living quarters, the ACS might not sample sufficient immigrant
households to accurately count their population, or people living in dense living
quarters might systematically underreport the number of people residing at their address.
Immigrant populations might be more mobile and thus underreported in the sample selection.
Bottom line: the data do not tell the same story as the anecdotes. Are the anecdotes
misleading, or do we need to reconsider the ways in which we collect immigration data
to get more accurate counts?
1Pérez, Santiago and Hackman, Michelle (Feb 7, 2023) “U.S. Business Owners Pay Premium to Hire Migrant Workers in Extremely Tight Labor Market” The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/migrants-are-doing-better-than-ever-thanks-to-tight-labor-market-11675784935?mod=hp_lead_pos8
2Harrison, David (Feb. 3, 2023) “Unemployment Falls to 3.4%, Lowest in 53 Years, Job
Report Shows” The Wall Street Journal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/january-jobs-report-unemployment-rate-economy-growth-2023-11675374490?page=1
See other Related Articles:
Job Vacancies and the Role of Immigrants
Labor Markets: Transitory or Structural Change?
Help Wanted & H-2A
Has Montana's Labor Force Shrunk?
Diane Charlton
Associate Professor