Total Employment to be substantially revised higher early 2025 when the BLS incorporates these up-revisions into its household survey employment data.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
The Census Bureau released its updated population estimates with data through July 2024 today, which corrected its vastly underestimated figure of immigrants for the past few years.
The prior Census Bureau data had so inadequately measured the tsunami of immigrants in 2021 through 2024 that it left policy makers, such as the Fed, in the dark about the supply of labor, employment, etc. To provide some insights, the Congressional Budget Office released its own estimates of population growth earlier this year, by incorporating data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Today’s data by the Census Bureau confirms that it was truly a tsunami of immigrants that washed over the land. And now it’s official.
The US population surged by 8 million people in the three years from July 2021 through July 2024, to 340.1 million, according to the updated estimates from the Census Bureau today.
The 3.3 million net increase over the 12 months through July 2024 was the largest in decades. And the biggest portion of increases came from net-immigration (those that came in minus those that left or were removed):
- 2022: +1.92 million, incl. 1.69 million net immigration
- 2023: +2.80 million, incl. 2.29 million net immigration
- 2024: +3.31 million, incl. 2.79 million net immigration
In terms of the 2.79 million net immigration in the 12 months through July 2024, the Census Bureau said in its note about the improved methodology that this was “significantly higher than our previous estimates, in large part because we’ve improved our methodology to better capture the recent fluctuations in net international migration,” by among other things using “newly available administrative data [including from the Department of State Bureau of Consular Affairs and Refugee Processing Center; and from Homeland Security] to adjust the usually survey-based estimates of foreign-born immigration.”
“Improved integration of federal data sources on immigration has enhanced our estimates methodology,” The Census Bureau said.
All immigration figures here are regardless of legal status.
In percentage terms, the population increased by nearly 1% over the 12 months through July 2024, the biggest percentage increase since 2001.
Over the three years through July 2024, the population increased by 2.4% (by 8.0 million people):
Coming Up-Revisions of Total Employment & Labor Force.
Early next year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will incorporate these new population data into its employment-related data obtained from the household survey and substantially revise up its figures for labor force, total employment, and unemployment, and the metrics derived from those.
The household survey data – labor force, employment, unemployment, etc. – has been in the fog for two years due to this large underestimation of the working new arrivals and new arrivals still looking for work.
For the BLS employment data, legal status of the workers is irrelevant. It’s not even part of the data.
The newly arrived immigrants who either already have a job or are looking for a job count in the labor force, regardless of legal status. If they’re working, they count as workers, regardless of legal status. Those that have not found a job yet, but are looking for a job, show up as unemployed regardless of legal status.
So we expect large up-revisions of overall employment, the labor force, unemployment, and related metrics.
But the up-revisions might not move the unemployment rate much since they would largely cancel out in the calculation of the unemployment rate: up-revised number of unemployed divided by up-revised labor force.
The up-revision should re-establish the historic difference between total employment, which is based on the household survey and population data (red line in the chart below) and nonfarm payroll jobs, based on data from establishments (blue).
That long-established and normally fairly stable difference between total employment and nonfarm payrolls is mostly caused by certain self-employed workers and farm workers not being included in nonfarm payrolls, but being included in total employment.
By not adequately accounting for the newly arrived immigrant workers, total employment (red) stopped growing and even declined a little since early 2023, while nonfarm payrolls have continued to rise at a solid pace as employers reported their immigrant workers on the establishment surveys (blue).
The coming up-revision of total employment in the household survey should raise the red line and re-establish the typical difference to the blue line.
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Hi Wolf. Does this include illegal/undocumented immigrants also? What would be the implication of Trumps proposed policy of sending back illegal immigrants? Thanks
Yes, All immigration figures here are regardless of legal status.
Wolf — is there any inconsistency between the upwardly revised jobs data oft discussed here and what’s reported in the QECW report? Per analyst interviewed on Bloomberg the QECW survey is showing monthly down revisions in non farm jobs — any idea what he’s referring to and what we should know about this survery, if anything?
The QECW uses the data from the unemployment insurance filings by employers. Every employer has to file those forms and pay unemployment insurance taxes on its legal employees to the IRS on a quarterly basis. So, by definition the QECW systematically excludes all workers who are in the country illegally because they don’t qualify for unemployment insurance and aren’t part of the data. Everyone who deals with this — outside the clickbait media — knows this. The QECW therefore systematically understated employment when this tsunami of immigrants arrived in 2022-2024 and started working.
All this is going to get worked out, now that we have the official increase in the population, as described here in the article. And they are going to be more big upward revisions of employment data when that flow of new workers is included in the employment data, which will happen early next year.
That is a striking graph. The rapid rate of decline from 2017 suddenly accelerates at 2021. Barring some massive inexplicable increase in births, at this rate there would have been zero increase in 2022 without immigration.
Same here with Canada. Rentals and home prices were dropping until late 2021 and early 2022 when the TTC and GO buses were packed with international students going to work in warehouses from 3pm to midnight.
Yeah. The current housing shortage is somewhat related to the Biden Open Borders Policy.
Something tells me that the deportations will not be equal to the immigration, which means that the housing shortage will continue for many years yet.
WHAT HOUSING SHORTAGE??? Why Does this BS keep getting repeated???
But DEMAND has collapsed.
There is an apartment glut — yeah that CRE problem we’re been talking about. The number of new completed houses for sale has spiked to the highest level since 2009…
https://wolfstreet.com/2024/11/26/inventory-of-new-single-family-houses-jumps-to-highest-since-2007-unsold-spec-houses-to-highest-since-2009-as-sales-suddenly-plunge/
There is absolutely no housing shortages.
The current stock market bubble is so massive that if you divide the price of just the top 8 stocks by 340 Million population you will have close to $60K per person. We could all get a Tesla.
Back of a napkin calculation, so give or take a Trillion. I added Broadcom to Mag 7 since it crossed $1 Trillion this week.
Don’t forget to subtract each person’s share of the US national debt. $36.1 trillion divided by 340 million is $106,300 per person.
Ugh…… those stocks aren’t just bought by Americans. It’s a big world out there.
It’s a big world of corp tax evasion:
Corporate income tax revenue in the United States amounted to 420 billion U.S. dollars in 2023, which was about 1.6 percent of the U.S. GDP.
That’s how we make America great!
Thank you.
And if you tried to liquidate 100% of the market cap, the share price would collapse (nowhere near enough buyers at *today’s* mkt price.
US companies are selling their stuff to the entire world, it’s not a really good referential to compare their sales to the US population
That’s right, you need to look at total global debt and global GDP and realize everything is far worse, especially in terms of per capita
But immigrants don’t increase the “global” population and “global per capita” figures, LOL. They’re just shifts from one country to another.
However, immigrants from Mars would reduce global per-capita figures.
Average net worth of US household = $1 million, pretty much exactly.
Average net worth of a person in the US is about $400,000, since the average household size is about 2.5
A good example of how useless a metric can be without reference to distribution.
Wrongo. The problem is “average” Put a billionaire (net worth $1 billion) and 9 homeless people (net worth $0) into a room, and the “average” wealth will be $100 million per person.
But the MEDIAN wealth of the people in that room is will be $0.
‘The problem is “average”’
That’s what I said.
No, you said “without reference to distribution.”
But maybe you meant to pinpoint the shortcomings of “average” (total wealth divided by number of people) over “median” (the wealth of the one person in the middle of the wealth list, with 50% of the people being richer and 50% being poorer), and it just didn’t quite come out that way.
Yes, that is what I meant but I also think any of these quicky math
formulas that can be useful in simplifying, say, physical measurements are of little practical use in this case.
As of Q3 2024, the top 1% of households in the United States own 30.8% of the country’s wealth.
So what? The remaining 70% of the country’s wealth is still GIGANTIC. 50% of the country’s wealth is still gigantic.
And the super-wealthy don’t sit on trillions of dollars in CDs, money market funds, and savings accounts. Their wealth is largely in company ownership and bonds. It’s the retail investors and savers that sit on those CDs, money market funds, and savings accounts, in addition to their home equity and in addition to whatever stocks they have in their 401ks and brokerage accounts.
why would anyone want a tesla
Because they like it? That’s the American way.
Teslas are made is USA. It’s the most “American” made vehicle after the Honda Ridgeline oddly enough.
No dealership hassles
Less maintenance
Cleaner air in cities
Fast, fun, safe
Full charge every morning.
It’s no wonder thete is such a distrust in our government! Kind of wonder about the “timing.” WHY NOW & not 3-4 months ago?
Turns out, it didn’t matter.
Everything that happens after Nov 5, triggers “why now” and it was all “politically motivated,” including when your car warns you that it needs an oil change? Do you people ever run out of BS to spread? I mean, run into a BS shortage?
This was the ANNUAL SCHEDULED revision of the Census Bureau’s population estimates. They do this EVERY YEAR at this time. We already knew it would be big, and I have been talking about it here for months. And we already had the estimates by the CBO earlier this year, which I also posted here, and they were pretty close to what the Census came up with:
https://wolfstreet.com/2024/04/03/how-the-huge-wave-of-immigrants-into-the-us-in-2022-and-2023-impacts-the-employment-data-of-the-bls-household-survey/
Wolf, one thing I learned in the car business is there is NEVER a shortage of BS :)
Great lesson on median, mean, avg etc and the election BS seems like every year the same stories emerge such as the shift from blue to red and the demographic shift government shutdowns etc all happen on all the presidents as long as we have an unfunded budget from tax revenue the more voting that happens the more press coverage they get with a higher likelihood of reelection which is their goal.
Plenty of apartment and home inventory for everyone in USA . On the west side of Houston North of I10 thousands of apartments finished and under construction so anyone needing an apartment head to Houston including immigrants and anyone else needing some work
It is more of a no confidence vote.
Open our borders, and make it politically incorrect to say the word Illegal.
No vetting. Drugs, gangs, and child trafficking. Our elected representatives
Chose to ignore a fundamental duty.
…and the citizenry, itself, corporate and otherwise, has historically ignored, or turned a blind eye to its own ‘fundamental duty’ to vet and refuse to hire those who have entered illegally, (let alone effectively confront our seemingly-insatiable private demand for illegal substances/activities) and blame-shift ‘the gubment’ for the results stemming from homegrown economic reasons…
may we all find a better day.
I don’t want the drugs gangs human trafficking or other undesirables in society here or anywhere else . I don’t want open borders but legal immigration is welcome with a kind heartfelt greeting for making the USA a great place to live
Past news reports said that it was mainly single working age men entering the country; looks like we found the reason labor and jobs are in better alignment like Jerome Powell said the imbalance helps cause inflation. Seems like these new arriving people should be welcomed.
you’re assuming that immigration is purely about the labor market. there are a lot of cultural impacts mass migration causes to the host society. some are positive, and some are negative.
discounting the negatives is in large part why discontent is so strong throughout the western world.
Well said Franz G. It’s not all “economic”. And “the voters” thoughout the west are speaking (USA, Germany, France, Canada, etc…)
The main problem with immigration and many other issues today is private benefits with public costs. So businesses (private) gets cheap labor which can’t really complain about things, but society burdens the costs of crowded schools, hospitals, crime, and all the other problems mass immigration mean. Never mind the costs from everything from free housing, food stamps and the billions and billions in benefits that are handed out to illegals today. Even at the individual level people are looking at the benefits of 5 cent lettuce versus 4 homes being burgled on their street last week.
This may be one reason analysts were “surprised” by the election results. The every-day person on the street sees the problems with unchecked migration (see black community response in Chicago), but business and government hums along like there is never an upper limit, ever on the number that can come in. And every human on the planet can come in because the pro-immigrant only look only on the benefit side, plus get to virtue signal what good people they are by holding that set of beliefs.
And even restricting it to the economic realm…exploding rents supported/caused by 8 million illegals has had terrible and profound consequences for native renters.
@whatever
Schools are closing all over the country due to lack of students due to persistent low birth rates. What crowding?
You don’t think crowded hospitals might have something more to do with 76m baby boomers in the US hitting Medicare eligibility?
I’ll ignore the rest of the barely veiled racism, but use your head.
what/Wm.McD.- would suggest another source of ‘hospital crowding’ stems from the steady closure of hospitals in general, especially those serving rural areas, over the last two decades…(…and, like so many things thought of as necessary public service, it takes awhile before those pushed out of an availability/cost loop of declining supply finally (conveniently, or otherwise, to those who remain), disappear).
“…forget it, Jake, it’s spacecraft Chinatown…”.
may we all find a better day.
In Canada, the student visa was used as a loophole for foreign labour and citizenship. But then it backfired when people with nefarious intents were caught plotting to do some heinous crimes in America thanks to the student visa loophole.
Some of that discontent is stoked.
It is people taking advantage of the ignorance of others for monetary and political gain.
I’ve met a few Uber/lyft drivers from all over the past couple years. They’ve all moved to the US in the past two years. They’re from Kazakhstan, Georgia, Russia, Ukraine, Cuba, Columbia, Venezuela. A few immigrated with families.
I do extend warm welcome wishes. They help keep the labor costs lower and send a message to their former governments that they’ve got some things to fix. Plus they’re a pleasure to chat with.
The Waymo robotaxis are doing a great job already in the few cities where they are active. For now, they’re just prototypes. But this will be a huge game changer for people who are making a living by driving others around.
Imteresting point – does the (general) shift to automation disproportionately affect immgrants and the jobs they do?
I wonder what implications this has for future immigration trends.
ShortTLT, immigrants are not really concentrated into a single sector of work, but rather pretty normally distributed.
So no, automation will not affect immigrants more than it affects all workers
https://usafacts.org/articles/which-industries-employ-the-most-immigrant-workers/
Germany found out that large numbers of “single working age men” commit most of the violent crimes, especially rape, murder, and terrorism.
The Austrians have already started to deport young Syrian men, and, after the recent attacks in Germany, I expect that other European countries will do the same.
This is not mostly about the labor market.
Single working age men have always been the largest purpetrators of those crimes, including in Germany before any large scale immigration.
It’s news to you that grannies aren’t the most frequent rapists?
Had the same thought. 😆😱 …Seems to align with all other species. It’s not complicated.
And the Fed runs around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to figure out why inflation is running higher than expected. Granted, there are other contributing factors, but the subject of this article is certainly squarely in the mix. And yet the Fed has cut a full 100-BP, when 25 back in Sept would have sent the signal, they were ready to cut based on month-to-month data. Well, we all know what the data is telling us: we’re in a holding pattern until Trump gets into office. We’ve known there was this great uncertainty with a real risk for inflation to the upside for the last two rate increases. It just doesn’t make sense, unless the Fed is trying to push down short-term rates without starting up QE. $6-7T in treasuries roll over next year to mostly bills & 2-3 notes. That’s a lot of interest expense.
“And the Fed runs around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to…”
Nope. The Fed has been talking about the wave of immigration all year.
For the Fed, this is a NEW SUPPLY OF LABOR, that helped loosen the tight labor market and labor shortages of 2021-2022. And for the Fed, this wave of immigration, by providing supply of labor and thereby keeping wage pressures in check, has helped REDUCE inflation pressures.
In addition, the Fed has been talking about this supply of labor when it shows up in the unemployment rate… that the unemployment rate ticked up from the historic lows in 2023 not through reduced demand for labor, but increased supply of labor. And I have discusses this here as well.
Powell and other Fed governors have been explicit and vocal about this because this huge supply of labor did have a large impact.
I have also described here how this influx of people has created new demand for goods and services, and that this new demand has helped keep consumer spending in a stronger growth mode than normal, despite the higher interest rates.
If the immigration numbers are so large that they can lower wage pressures, then surely they are large enough to cause rising prices in shelter and food and increase the
burden on government services.
These additional costs would be mostly borne by the working class, no ?
The working class directly competes with immigrants. Large waves of immigration are never good for the working class, which is why Trump got part of the Latino and black and white working-class vote. Trump figured this out years ago.
But immigrant labor supports production in construction, agriculture, oil and gas drilling, manufacturing, low-level services, etc., and higher production may reduce inflationary pressures.
There are a lot of moving parts here.
“And for the Fed, this wave of immigration, by providing supply of labor and thereby keeping wage pressures in check, has helped REDUCE inflation pressures.”
And from a policy standpoint, this is bad for American workers, driving down wages & driving up unemployment. That’s a double whammy which doesn’t even come close to quantifying all the other potentially negative outcomes. CHEAP LABOR, no matter what the cost which is kind of a problem with the Fed, I believe. They should weigh in somehow with specific details about your point, so Americans can better decide about the cost vs benefit. Most, I would imagine wouldn’t be swayed by whatever the Fed had to say.
And despite all you’ve said about the Fed being intune with robust immigration and its effects on inflation, they’re still cutting, when it’s pretty darn obvious that the overall demand side is stripping away the benefit of the lower wages.
So the question for you is: do you think the Fed has cut rates too much? That’s ultimately what I’m talking about here, and I know it’s very unlikely you’ll answer the question directly which is fine.
“And from a policy standpoint, this is bad for American workers, driving down wages & driving up unemployment.”
The fed should round up half of all minimum wage workers and just throw them in jail. They too are driving down wages and driving up unemployment. In fact they should keep rounding up low wage workers until we reach zero unemployment and high wages for the average worker.
The fed can then cap the number of children people can have so we don’t have all these excess workers driving down wages and driving up unemployment in the future. The fed will then have eliminated the dreaded double whammy in perpetuity.
Finally, some outside-the-box thinking. I was afraid to say all that, but you make some good points.
The mass immigration seems like a double whammy to the American working class. The new supply of labor puts downward pressure on wages, while the new demand for goods and services puts upward pressure on prices, like rent, food, and other necessities…
Hence the frustration
Huge numbers of immigrants in recent years are a big reason for the massive inflation in rents in house prices in the USA and Canada.
“this wave of immigration, by providing supply of labor and thereby keeping wage pressures in check, has helped REDUCE inflation pressures.”
What is the affect of this additional supply of labor on rent in the areas the immigrants are drawn to?
Sometimes, immigrants just move into existing, horrible rural communities because – miraculously – even the laziest white people up and left.
Like, driving through BF, PA, apple orchard country: Some old towns there are just full of latinos. It looks really funny, because you expect to see just grumpy old white people, but I guess all their kids left; they weren’t about to pick apples.
White people only pick apples if they’re paying for the privilege on weekends, being ironic with their kids. Welfare apparently pays better than all that nonsense.
(But they’re taking our jobs)
Great points on immigration and helping keep inflation down . Maybe offset by consumer spending. Most likely the immigration that has occurred is at the front of my retail experiences with fast food restaurants and retail fuel . I don’t see the immigrants on the golf course
You have it backwards. Unsurprising.
What do you think is going to happen with inflation when millions of farm workers are deported?
Yes, and take it one step further. Unscrupulous employers have used undocumented labor to their advantage forever. But the rapid deportation of these workers will lead these same employers to start poaching employees from legitimate employers creating the next wave of wage increases. You cannot severely disrupt the labor market without harming those who have not participated in the arbitrage.
To be clear, I am saying deportation should be done, but thoughtfully. Along with this, more consistent punishment of companies that willfully employ undocumented workers. As long as immigrants can get jobs, they will keep coming. If you think more border enforcement will solve this problem, you have a very simple view of the problem. Look at illegal drugs. More border agents, more inspections, massive budget increases, …, and more drugs.
How about punishment ( prefer jail time ) for elected officials
who willfully violate federal laws?
Lets make it much easier for companies to verify if the applicant is here legally. If they choose to violate…they can room with the
politician who made it easier to cross the border.
Our neighbors North & South….lets all be good neighbors….
or do we need a HOA?
tom – …interested in your view of a citizen’s (corporate and private) responsibilities in our nation. Respectfully, ‘making it easier’ sounds (to me) like an aspect of advocating for a bigger government to do something I could/should be (‘patriotically’?) doing as a ‘cost of doing business’, rather than finding a way to privatize even more profit whilst socializing more risk…
may we all find a better day.
Looks like a return to trend after COVID. Hopefully this will help Social Security make payments well into the future.
That seems like the classic “short term” selfish thinking. “Oh we need someone to pay our entitlements”… “so lets just open the gates and let any illegal immigrant who can flood over the border”. I’d much rather have entitlement reform. I’d rather wait until say 65 to get my social security and 67 to get my medicaid if it means “smarter” more controlled immigration. Let’s get the right people with the right skills USA needs into the country. Not some free for all letting anyone in who rushes the border. Or fake assylum refugees whom we have no idea what skill set they bring.
It seems like you are pretending he said something that he didn’t actually in order for you to vent your ignorant biases.
Do better. Use better sources of information, ones that do not take advantage of you.
The right people with the right skills are low wages workers.
It’s almost impossible for me to hire a “real American” in my food manufacturing business unless they are an ex-con or junkie.
I’ll go with Javier who’s sending money back home thank you very much.
Have you tried paying those “real Americans” more, offering them adequate benefits, and providing good working conditions, enough hours, and training? Sometimes that works. But that might squeeze your profit margin a little.
Wolf- this. Thank you. (…when did we trade racing to the stars to, instead, race to the bottom?).
may we all find a better day.
@Wolf
Yes, we’re tried raising wagea and other benefits in many ways with precious little impact, though raising wages does net us more productive immigrant labor. Even salaried with benefits supervisor positions we struggle to justify filling with natives vs ambitious immigrants if labor output is the only criteria.
Increasing hourly wage doesn’t provide more time to stay home on the sofa smoking pot and playing video games, which seems to be the real competition for many native sons’ time in my lived experience. Lot’s of your neighbors’ kids are just downright lazy, entitled, and unreliable.
I would point to the 580 bps decline in native born men’s labor participation rate and 250 bps decline in native born women’s labor participation rate since 2005 as demonstrating the phenomena in stats.
Of course, that foreign born men’s participation rate has declined by 380 bps while foreign born women’s rate has INCREASED by 200 bps shows that there is something gender-based and sociological going on under the hood.
1. Did you ever hear about boomers retiring in huge numbers and how that impacts participation rates? Now go back and look up 25-54 year olds.
2. If every employer is like you and hires immigrants instead of native-born because they’re cheaper, then it’s harder for native-born people to get jobs, especially at the level where they compete with your favorite labor, which is cheap labor. and that would impact participation rates as well. Which is why many (native born) Latinos and Blacks voted for Trump.
@Wolf
Fair point on the age structure of the workforce. It largely cancels out the higher participation rate, though I’m not sure in this day and age why 54-65 aren’t relevant, given their overall participation rate is only 1,000 bps lower then “prime age” and foreign born are much more likely to be working.
Per the “if every employer paid lower wages” comment, I’m just relaying what I see on the ground. I post a job at wage X, it attracts 100% non-native. If I post the same job at X+30% if gets me a different set of non-native and a few natives with glaring flaws (face tattoos and never show up on the Sat AM shift). Sure, I can “buy American” on principle and get a Dodge that’s built like garbage and costs 50% more than the Hyundai, but I think history has shown this is an unrealistic expectation and doesn’t change behavior as we are profit maximizing actors.
Are there any material follow-on implications to per-capita (GDP, spending or debt, etc) calculations? Or any population related data?
This population data – the massive increase in workers and consumers over a three-year period – is important for much of our understanding of the economy, which is why I posted it as a special article. And you will see me refer to it and link it many times going forward, much like I have referred to the CBO’s estimated of this data over the past 8 months.
As I described in the article, revision of the population data will cause big up-revisions in the jobs report’s employment data. In terms of the consumer spending and income data, I’m not sure. They were just revised a lot higher for the past two years, with smaller revisions going back to 2019. This is done every fall, so we won’t see that for another 10 months. All per-capita data will be impacted by it as data providers start using the revised population data. There will be other impacts.
For comparison, Canada’s population grew, on a proportional basis, more than twice as fast as the USA….and Canada still has a labor shortage. Demographics is the slow killer of any economy, just look at aging/depopulating Europe.
Don’t tell the surging ranks of unemployed people in Canada that there is a labor shortage in your mind (since you’re a Canadian expat living in a poor country in Africa with reckless population growth due to sigh birthrates). Canada’s unemployment rate has surged from 5.0% in 2023 to 6.8% now. Which is why the government is reversing some of its immigration policies, and which is why the BOC has cut rates so far.
…also Canadian youth are really struggling to keep financially afloat, it’s very hard to get a job, the wages are very low, high house prices, crime and debt increasing etc. It has torn the social fabric of the country apart
Correct. The people who say Canada has a labor shortage are liars.
Transparency and accountability would be a good thing, has something like this ever been tried before…you know like being honest and truthful. Wouldn’t work…people are crazy, can’t tell them anything, they’ll go running off the cliff. Got to treat them like stupid cattle, fatten them up then eat them.
The migrants share of the US 36 trillion debt is around 100 thousand each, make sure they know that.
It must make you feel tough to take chickenshit potshots at bureaucrats who don’t have a venue to reply to people like you.
Mostly illegal entry I would take it ? It’s pretty shocking a Government or President would allow this
it’s not shocking if a government’s goal is to destabilize the nation.
It is not shocking if the goal is to provide cheap undocumented labor.
Or if the goal is to keep your consumption based economy cranking as fewer natives have children and fewer of the native population will work at low-end jobs.
You can try and take the ice cream away from spoiled kids who’ve been raised by their parents for white collar work in air conditioned offices , but they aren’t likely to be happy about it.
Ignorance is destabilizing the nation more than immigrants. You are a big contributor.
You would be wrong. Refugees are not illegal entry.
WOW, people are freaking out about all the immigration like it was a bad thing, but without it we’d be pretty damn close to tipping into a shrinking population. Shrinking AND aging, aka the Japan scenario.
Population decline is just about the worst thing that could happen for the economy, it would likely mean permanent recession (year-over-year GDP declines).
It’ll be interesting to see what happens over the next 4+ years; if it’s a more extreme decline in the population growth chart than what we saw 2016-2020 then we’re headed for a massive crash.
P.S – USA life-expectancy has been going down, so maybe that balances out the equation 🙃
WOW, and I am tired of people talking about immigration like it’s only a good thing and improves the economy. I live in NYC, and I can list a million things that are bad about uncontrolled immigration that allows only people from third-world countries. If you need more workforce, start giving more work visas to people needed in certain sectors after they have been vetted, etc. Because otherwise the quality of life goes down to shit…
as if anyone with a brain would want those jobs. we need people without much going on to come here and do the jobs most americans refuse to do. otherwise expect higher prices
“I can list a million things that are bad about uncontrolled immigration that allows only people from third-world countries.”
That’s what the Native Americans said about British people coming over en masse in the 1600 and 1700s.
And then the protestant British people said the same thing about the hordes of Catholic Irish and low wage Germans in the 1800s.
And then all the western Europeans said the same thing about uncontrolled immigration from uneducated southern and eastern Europe in the late 1800s.
And then every one went berserk with the invasion from the job taking Asian immigrants in the 1900s and said the same thing except they went full on racist and created the Immigration Act of 1924 to “preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity” which meant no one from Asia could lawfully immigrate to the US.
Which wave of unwanted immigrants did your ancestors belong to?
(Some of) my ancestors walked to North America during the Ice Age. I am sure that the local Sabre-Tooth Tigers were unhappy about these immigrants.
;-)
I was very wanted, actually. I came on almost full scholarship to a great private school in NYC. My English was fluent, and I was never a burden to the taxpayers. I came from modest means in Eastern Europe. I had to be interviewed for a visa, prove financial means, receive vaccinations, etc., before I got here.
I don’t know who was wanted and unwanted 100 years ago, but I can see firsthand what the situation is now.
But please, since you think this kind of immigration is something we should all embrace, tell me how that is sustainable and how a city like New York, or in fact any other major city, can afford to keep housing and feeding hundreds of thousands of people in hotels, costing billions? How many years can this continue before cuts to city programs, overburdening school and medical systems, and exacerbating a housing shortage in a city that was already unaffordable prior to all of this?
“uncontrolled immigration that allows only people from third-world countries”
If it’s uncontrolled, how is it only allowing people from 3rd world countries?
You tell me, I guess having them sleeping at airports and hundreds of hotels and shelters costing taxpayers a fortune is controlled for you. lol
Good thing there isn’t uncontrolled immigration in this country. It is clear you don’t understand the law, policies or what has been happening. You just regurgitation what you hear from people who take advantage of you.
Rob B.
There is always some goofball that cannot distinguish between orderly legal immigration that the economy can handle, and this sudden tsunami of mostly illegal immigration that no one was ready for.
Wolf,
Refugee immigration is not illegal immigration. Much of the tsunami of new entrants are refugees, not illegal. Many of the entrants may ultimately end up being denied entry, but it was illegal to try.
Part of the problem we are experiencing is that there is no much nonsense surrounding immigration. People are hyping the wrong things for political gain and as a result, nothing ever gets done because mythical problems are created so the actual real problems never get addressed.
Sorry. It should say “WASN’T illegal to try”.
No, they’re not “refugees,” they’re asylum seekers. They have no valid reason for asylum but they come and apply for asylum, and after they applied, they’re let loose temporarily, and over the years that their case is pending, they vanish into the country. The whole blatant abuse of the asylum system to get across the border is a scandal. Everyone knows what’s going on. The government isn’t making a secret out of it. There have been efforts to stop it, not letting people into the US to apply for asylum, but making them apply at a Consulate in some country, is one such step. Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy also tried to address the abuse of the asylum system.
“Much of the tsunami of new entrants are refugees, not illegal.”
That is a result of a Biden policy change (much, much easier to claim “asylum”) versus any actual change in reality.
But also a reason why there is *zero* excuse for the easily predictable (and, in fact, widely predicted) tsunami being “unexpected”.
That’s why it is very easy to see the “accident” (the 7 million immigrant oopsie) as in fact a plan (to offset the long predicted but also distress incentivized decline in citizen population).
90% of those “refugees “are economical immigrants which crossed many countries to get here. This insanity needs to stop because even Democrats like me are fed up with it and that’s why Trump won again.
…historically, population surpluses and vacuums ultimately recognize few borders of any type…
may we all find a better day.
Eyeballing that percentage change chart…it is pretty darn interesting how the post 2016 collapse is pretty darn close to the post 2020 explosion (it nets out with a smallish positive).
That’s some surprising rough symmetry.
All systems tend toward equilibrium, but usually it’s hard to see without some complicated maths. This one looks pretty convincing to the naked eye. Plus, everybody knows how policy and enforcement varied, helping assign cause to the visible effect. How far could it go in either direction given policies available? I’ll start the speculation, but only by defining the extremes (the easy part):
Suppose we shut down immigration entirely and ship out the lingerers with all the fanfare we can muster. Not just boarder jumpers, but Visa transgressions, H1B, H2A, etc. Send a message to the world, USA is closed, we’re now a private organization.
This won’t happen, but sans legal constraints on executive actions, who know? Some easy answers – crops rotting in the fields, “natives” cleaning their own houses, gardening, roofing, driving, coding, making sushi, etc. – > wage and services inflation (supply), goods deflation (beyond normal), lower unemployment (%, not #), lower housing/transportation costs (demand). What else? Maybe generally stagnant equities with some winners, and more losers. Accelerated investment in automation.
On the other hand, if “country of residence” was a free market (also not gonna happen) we would probably be looking at something north of 3-5x current numeric immigration to USA (see Canada). Success in some places, squalor in others, not unlike 1880-1924 (or right now x5). Overall – generalized wage deflation (supply of labor), inflation in goods, services, and housing (demand), higher unemployment (#, possibly %) equities up generally (inflation and productivity).
Which extreme is “better”? Low wage workers are gonna feel very differently than 5-10%ers like us with the privilege of Friday afternoon keyboard musings. But I’m a free markets guy, I say let’em all in. It worked pretty well before 1924. Hell, those guys built the greatest country ever, one strong enough to withstand a pretty long run of governmental incompetence (~60 years with an occasional outlier period not to exceed 18 months). Besides that, if it weren’t for our history of open borders I wouldn’t be here, and neither would a lot of you. Few things make the world a better place than a couple million more Americans telling everybody back home how great we are. That’s how you win hearts and minds.
Trump and Homan are talking about deporting 12.5 million illegals. The net effect will be higher wages, and lower rents. Nobody knows how successful they will be, but higher wages and lower rents are good for most people. The higher wages will of course be inflationary, along with the possible tariffs.
I give the Census Bureau some credit for these population revisions, but one really has to dig into the details (the small print) to see if they make sense. It is very difficult to do this kind of work and end up with convincing results.
The Census Bureau published reams of documents and massive amounts of data about this yesterday. By all means, dig through them.
No thanks. I have done this population stuff enough to know it is a hornet’s next, as you say “reams of documents”. The decadal censuses have enough problems. Intercensal estimates are even tougher. It is okay to assume the Census Bureau’s estimates are correct, but realize they are estimates, and could be way off. For example, the government has no idea about the actual number of illegal immigrants, and that is just one component of population growth. The recent number I have heard thrown around is 12.5 million.
I know Wolf uses government data, his whole web site depends on it. The Fed uses the same data. But just think about all the revisions, some fairly dramatic, and wonder. Ever hear of a revision being revised? I am not saying it is all bs, but the Fed’s inability to come up with reliable models may be in part due to over-reliance on faulty data.
ALL large data are estimates. It you want absolute certainty, go to church. This here is not church. Choose where you want to be. If you don’t like data, you don’t belong here, you belong in church. If you have any doubts where you belong, don’t come back until you know.
Actually, the government has a pretty good idea about the people walking across the border because most of them go to the nearest officer and turn themselves in to be processed and released or returned. Asylum applicants do that as standard procedure. Some of the others that don’t are caught. And so you can build models based on what you know. Census finally checked with ICE’s data and the State Department’s data, etc. ICE knows how many border crossers, and how many were sent back. And how many are multiple crossers that were sent back repeatedly. The number of border crossers is sometimes cited by morons, but many of them are sent back. So it’s the NET you’re looking for. All this data is known to the government, but Census didn’t use it until just now. I explained that briefly in the article, citing Census.
Getting a number of legal residents are not that difficult, it only takes a propper population register. One entry with an identity number, name and adress for all residents.
Then use this as the basis for the driving license register, taxpayer register and all other governmental registers. Here the population register is keept up to data and if there is discrepancies between registers questions are asked.
Then enforce a requirement for all banks to have everyone with an account to prove their identety.
Where I live the government did just that. Causing some inconvinence for some people. Like people that did have to show up with a documented relative to prove their existence at the passport office to get their identity confirmed.
Another observation…look at the net immigration numbers at the three bullet points (from Wolf’s post),
2022: +1.92 million, incl. 1.69 million net immigration
2023: +2.80 million, incl. 2.29 million net immigration
2024: +3.31 million, incl. 2.79 million net immigration
Then consider that net US payroll growth from 2015 to 2019 (pre-pandemic volatility) was…
2015: 2.7 million
2016: 2.3
2017: 2.1
2018: 2.3
2019: 2.0
That’s a pretty damn high share relative to the pre-pandemic period.
And to forestall complaints here are the net adds during the pandemic chaos…
2020: minus 9.3 million
2021: 7.2 million
2022: 4.5
2023: 3.0
Post pandemic aggregate net payroll add…5.4 million
2021-2023 6.8 million net illegals added.
So…1.4 million more illegals added than post-pandemic jobs created.
I’m sure that Wolf will point out if my math is off someplace.
If the native population isn’t growing or growing only slowly, big increases in payrolls have to come from immigration. That’s just math. A stable population cannot increase payrolls month after month year after year when the unemployment rate is already at a historic low of 3.5%. Who is going to take those open jobs?
Why do we need to increase payrolls month after month year after year anyway? For the investors and billionaires? Not sure Americans really care about the privileged few these days. Populism has taken over and it doesn’t seem to be compatible with the CNBC worldview anymore
The 6.8 million net immigration post-pandemic aren’t “illegals”… the entire illegal population is like ~12-13ish million.
Approx 75% of migrants in the US are legal. Not saying it isnt an issue. But, let’s just be accurate here.
“So…1.4 million more illegals added than post-pandemic jobs created.”
You assume it is illegal entry. It likely isn’t.
For both Dan and JimL,
The huge surge in immigrants appears to correlate *very* well with Biden policy changes concerning legal/illegal/refugee/etc. status.
At the end of the day, waving the policy wand to change “illegal” to legal/refugee doesn’t alter the *econonmic* consequences of the huge surge.
But it *does* highlight the massive incentive effects that DC wand waving had on the number of “immigrants”.
…hmm, I find the determining illegal immigrant numbers segment of this discussion interesting. My aged memory may be at fault, but I vaguely recall the head of the incoming administration not wanting a count of those numbers, AT ALL…
may we all find a better day.
Patch: Party City To Close All Stores, Including Over 75 In CA
Party City’s “very best efforts have not been enough to overcome” its financial troubles, its CEO said, resulting in the company’s collapse.
Party City is going out of business, closing all remaining stores in California and elsewhere, ending its 40-year reign as the go-to party supplier in the country, according to CNN reporters who viewed a meeting of the company’s corporate employees Friday.
CEO Barry Litwin told corporate employees the company is “winding down” operations and Friday was their last day of employment.
“That is without question the most difficult message that I’ve ever had to deliver,” Litwin said at the meeting, which was held on a video conference call. Party City’s “very best efforts have not been enough to overcome” its financial challenges, he added, resulting in the company’s collapse.
Just posting my opinion…… It seems the US does well with substantial immigration however those immigrants should come legally so they match the occupations needed and are verified as having good character ie not part of a criminal gang. The idea that we purposely encourage illegal immigration which results in a “slave class” that can be exploited is very wrong.
A legal functioning immigration policy would also allow an immigration slowdown during bad economic times protecting American workers. It would be interesting to give the Fed the control over amount of immigration per year.
Why is it so hard to update our immigration policy that is unchanged in the last 60 years?
Bob,
I get where you’re coming from, but I don’t think having government select people worthy of immigrating is a good path to follow.
It’s not that far off from wanting government to select who is worthy to breed.
We have an economic system which loves surplus labor which includes both political parties. The voting working class don’t love it, thus the bizarre, but easy to see through, narratives that get pushed constantly. Both parties ensure things like eVerify get canned and consequences are zero for those that misuse it. Had neighbors who owned a winery and no consequences if they ‘believed’ the paperwork to be authentic. Will just be more of that drama moving forward.