Americans Lose Jobs to Immigrants Again

According to the latest job growth figures, foreign-born workers once again outpaced native-born workers in October.

In October:

• Total employment rose 320,000, up by 0.2%
• Native-born American employment rose by 198,000, up by 0.2%
• Foreign-born employment rose by 122,000 – up by 0.5%

Immigrant employment grew 0.5% in October—two and one-half times the 0.2% growth in native-born American employment. Still, October was better, relatively speaking, than August or September, when native-born Americans lost actually jobs and immigrants gained them.

Since July:

• Total employment has risen 280,000, up by 0.2%

• Native-born American employment has declined by 175,000, down by 0.1%

• Foreign-born employment rose by 455,000 – up by 1.9%

These latest figures track with trends going on since Barack Obama took office

Immigrant employment rose 5.4-times faster than native-born American employment – 15.6% versus 2.9%—during the Obama years. In many unskilled occupations, the job growth gap is far larger, owing to the disproportionate number of foreign-born workers.

Even through a massive recession and a workforce participation rate at multi-decade lows, foreign-born workers gained the most jobs throughout the Obama reign:

In February 2009, President Obama’s first full month in office, 14.97% of all persons working in the U.S. were foreign-born. In October 2015 the foreign-born share was 16.78%. That is up from 16.73% in September, 16.70% in August, and 16.50% in July.

In only 10 of the 82 months of Obama’s Presidency have immigrant workers grabbed a greater share of U.S. employment than they did last month.

Overall, October’s immigrant employment share was 1.81 percentage points above the level recorded at the start of Mr. Obama’s administration.