Half a Million Fewer Native-Born Americans Had Jobs in January

The number of native-born Americans with a job declined by more than half a million last month, according to not-seasonally adjusted government data released Friday.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 123,710,000 native-born Americans (ages 16 and over) were employed during the month of January, 567,000 Americans fewer than the month of December.

The number of unemployed native-born Americans increased by 669,000 reaching 6,956,000 people in January and the number of naive-born people out of the labor force increased by 69,000, hitting 80,704,000.

Native-born Americans had an unemployment rate of 5.3 percent and a labor force participation rate of 61.8 percent.

Meanwhile the foreign-born population also saw a decrease in its employment level, though not as dramatic as the native-born population. During the month of January the number of foreign-born people in the U.S. with a job declined by 98,000 to hit 25,328,000. January was the fourth month in a row that the foreign-born population with a job exceed 25 million.

The unemployment rate for foreign-born people in the U.S. last month was 5.1 percent and the labor force participation rate was 65.0 percent.

While both the native and foreign born populations lost jobs last month this has not been the long term trend. Native and foreign-born people in the U.S. have gained about the same number of jobs since President Obama took office. While job growth for native and foreign-born people has been about on par, the population of working-age, native-born Americans has grown by nearly twice as much as the foreign-born population.

In other words, the working-age foreign-born population has increased by 6 million since Obama’s inauguration, while the working-age native-born population has increased by 11.6 million people. In that time-frame, foreign-born people in the U.S. gained 4 million jobs and native-born Americans gained 4.6 million jobs.