Teenage jobs are about to suffer as Mexico’s looming financial crisis is about to accelerate illegal immigration.
Despite the perception of happy youth enjoying their minimum wage summer jobs, the U.S. Labor Force Participation rate of 16-19 year olds just hit an all-time-low of 31.6 percent, down by an average of 23.9 percent during the Obama Administration.
The labor force participation rate, including those working and those looking for work, has declined for every age group between 16 and 55 years old during the Obama Administration by an average of about 4 percent. The media have tended to blame the decline on: 1) the aging of baby boomers; 2) a decline in working women; and 3) more young people are going to college.
But as Breitbart News reported last month in “Federal Reserve: Illegal Immigrants Take Teenagers’ Summer Jobs,” the Fed determined that “the increase in the population of less educated immigrants has had a considerably more negative effect on employment outcomes for native youth than for native adults.”
The majority of American teenagers used to learn valuable life lessons about earning money and taking responsibility from summer and part time jobs. But that started shrinking with a series of immigrant amnesties in the late 1990s that started replacing them with cheap immigrant labor.
It is estimated that through May, about 2.5 million illegal aliens/undocumented workers had entered the U.S. since President Obama took office. The trend has been slightly below the Bush Administration’s rate, because U.S. unemployment was higher than Mexico’s.
But teenage labor participation plummeted during the Obama Administration, because the President’s “Dreamer” executive order stopped deportations and allowed up to 5 million work permits to be issued to illegal aliens under 30 years old. Realizing a once in a lifetime opportunity to become a U.S. citizen, youth illegal immigration ballooned.
Although Mexico’s economy had been growing over the last 6 years at a much faster pace than the U.S. as Mexico deregulated its oil and telecommunications industries, economic recently shrank from 3.7 to 1.6 percent, and the peso currency has just plummeted to record lows against the dollar. With a financial crisis in Mexico looming, illegal immigration could accelerate to over 1 million in the next year.
The percentage of teenagers in the U.S. actually working at this time is only 28.1 percent. About a year before the Great Recession, “teen employment began another drop-off–one that began to flatten out in early 2010. The trend remained relatively flat with an ever-so-slight drift higher over the past 36 months”,according to Advisor Perspectives.
During the Obama Administration, there has been a greater negative unemployment impact on boys than on girls. The current teenage unemployment rate for boys is 17.5 percent, versus 16.8 percent for girls. It is believed that the male rate would be even higher, but a large number of boys still enlist in the military after they turn least 17 years old.