There remain about 11.4 million Americans who are out of work, sitting on the labor market sidelines, but all of whom want full-time, high-wage jobs without being forced to compete against a growing number of cheaper, foreign workers.
The latest employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics finds there is still slack in the labor market and thus businesses can pull disenfranchised Americans back into work through higher wages, better working conditions, and competitive benefit packages.
Overall, about 5.9 million Americans are unemployed — 12.2 percent of whom are teenagers who generally seek entry-level jobs and six percent of whom are black Americans. These nearly six million unemployed also include about 1.2 million Americans who are considered “long-term unemployed” because they have been out of work for more than six months.
Another 4.2 million Americans are working part-time jobs but want full-time employment. Additionally, 1.3 million Americans are out of the labor force entirely after looking for a job sometime within the last year. These marginally attached Americans are available for work and want full-time jobs.
Roughly 337,000 of the 1.2 million Americans out of the labor force completely are considered “discouraged workers” because they do not believe there are jobs in the labor market for them.
In total, about 11.4 million Americans are either unemployed, out of the labor force, or underemployed; however, all have said they want good-paying, full-time jobs.
While Americans have enjoyed significant wage growth in President Trump’s economy for blue-collar and working-class Americans, corporate interests have increasingly suggested that the U.S. must continue importing millions of foreign workers every year to fill jobs.
In April 2019, former Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue said the U.S. needed more legal immigration because the country is “out of people.”
Extensive research by economists like George Borjas and analyst Steven Camarota has found that the country’s current legal immigration system — wherein 1.2 million mostly low-skilled workers are admitted annually — burdens U.S. taxpayers and America’s working and middle class while redistributing about $500 billion in wealth every year to major employers and newly arrived immigrants.
Camarota, director of research for the Center for Immigration Studies, has found that every one percent increase in the immigrant composition of American workers’ occupations reduces their weekly wages by about 0.5 percent. This means the average native-born American worker today has his weekly wages reduced by perhaps 8.5 percent because of current legal immigration levels.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.