Jeremy Horpedahl
Jeremy Horpedahl
Over the past five years, the US labor market has added, on net, 5.4 million jobs, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics household survey. The establishment survey shows an even larger gain of seven million jobs. The differences between the household (Current Population Survey) and establishment (Current Employment Statistics) surveys is notable, but for the purposes of this post, I use the household survey because it has the necessary demographic information to analyze workers. Of those 5.4 million new jobs, almost all of the net gains have gone to foreign-born workers, who saw an increase of 4.7 million jobs. There are only about 650,000 more native-born workers in the United States than at the beginning of 2020.
Does this mean that foreigners actually are “taking our jobs”? No. To understand why, you need to know a little about the pool of potential native-born workers.
First, we need to recognize that even though the total number of native-born workers has fallen, the percentage of native-born Americans of prime working age (25–54) is slightly higher than it was five years ago. Using a 12-month average, it was 80.7 percent in January 2020 and 81.5 percent in January 2025. (Figure 1). Foreign-born workers also saw an increase over this time period, from 77.1 percent to 78.1 percent, and both of these measures are essentially at their highest readings going back to 2007, when the data series begins.
How do the data in Figure 1 square with the earlier data, which show that all net job gains went to foreign-born workers?
The two facts are easy to reconcile. The number of native-born Americans of prime working age is not growing: It has been basically flat since about 2013, as my Cato colleague Scott Lincicome showed in a recent essay. And this problem will only get worse: The US birth rate began declining in 2007—exactly 18 years ago, » Read More
https://www.cato.org/blog/native-born-americans-are-not-losing-jobs-foreigners