April 09, 2007

National Data, By Edwin S. Rubenstein

Blacks Crushed By Immigrant Job Juggernaut

Employers hired workers at a surprisingly strong clip in March. The headlines spoke of a 180,000 gain in payrolls, but the "other" job survey—based on households rather than businesses—revealed an even more robust gain: 335,000 employees for the month. [Bureau of Labor Statistics, "The Employment Situation: March 2007," April 6, 2007 PDF]

Here is the March job story by racial group:

In other words, in percentage terms, Hispanic job growth was more than twice that of non-Hispanics. (Some 40 percent of Hispanics are foreign born, so they are a good proxy for the displacement of American workers by immigrants.) The Hispanicization of the U.S. workforce is happening, of course, because immigrants are cheaper than U.S.-born workers. Many are paid "off the books"—freeing their employers of the onerous burden of payroll taxes and unemployment compensation.

Blacks, arguably the group competing most directly with immigrant workers, suffered significant job losses in March. They were the only group whose unemployment rate rose.

Black males fared particularly poorly. Their March unemployment rate was 9.0 percent, up a whopping 1.6 points from the prior month. This occurred despite a decline in labor force participation among Black males—a sign that they are "giving up" and simply not looking for jobs—and thus not counted as unemployed.

Jobs that Americans won’t do? Don’t tell that to unemployed African-Americans.

Of course, one month’s figures do not conclusively prove that immigrant workers are displacing non-Hispanics. But the long-term trends in Hispanic and non-Hispanic employment certainly point that way. Since the start of the Bush Administration (January 2001) through this March, Hispanic employment increased by 4,170,000—a gain of 25.9 percent. Just 4,308,000 new jobs were filled by non-Hispanics—a gain of 3.5 percent.

Bottom line: Hispanics grabbed nearly half of the jobs created during the Bush administration.

Evidence for worker displacement is so marked that we developed a monthly indicator to track it. The VDARE.COM American Worker Displacement Index (VDAWDI) is the ratio of Hispanic to non-Hispanic job growth, expressed as an index number, since January 2001:

The blue line represents Hispanic job growth, pink is non-Hispanic growth, and the ratio of the two—VDAWDI—is in yellow.

In March 2007, the VDAWDI rose to 121.6, up from 121.3 the prior month, and yet another all-time record.