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July 05, 2004
Non-Citizens, Hispanics Get Most New American Jobs
More than a million new jobs have
been created in the U.S. so far this year. Despite the
apparent end of the jobless recovery, President Bush’s
economic approval rating among likely voters hasn’t
budged. A
recent analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center offers
several possible explanations for the economic/political
disconnect:
1. Non-voters Are Getting a
Disproportionate Share of New Jobs. In the 12 months
ended March 31st, the economy added a total
of 1.33 million new jobs. (Table
1) During this period:
 | Job growth among non-citizens
(3.3 percent) was more than four-times that of
citizens (0.8 percent) |
| In swing states, non-citizens
account for 6 percent of total employment, but 21.8
percent of all new jobs created |
All in all, the share of new jobs
garnered by
non-citizens (28.5 percent) was three-times their
share of the U.S. labor force (8.6 percent.)
2. Hispanics dominate the new
job market. For a Republican, George W. Bush
does fairly well with Hispanic voters (that is.
merely terrible rather than utterly catastrophic).
But his 31 percent share of the
Latino vote in 2000 merely reinforces this reality:
the Republican Party is
fundamentally a white party. [See the analysis of
demographics and political destiny by
Peter Brimelow and myself:
With this in mind, the ethnic
distribution of new jobs created over the past year does
not bode well for Republican prospects: (Table
2.)
| More than half – 53 percent – of
all new jobs created in the last 12 months
went to Hispanics |
| Virtually all Hispanic job
growth was among newly arrived (2000 or later)
immigrants |
| Native-born Hispanics and
pre-2000 Hispanic immigrant cohorts
lost a combined 43,526 jobs |
The last point is especially
troubling for Republicans. This segment of the Hispanic
population is: a) the most likely to vote, and b) the
most likely to contain the acculturated, conservative
Hispanics who voted for George Bush in 2000.
3. Real wages have
stagnated for Hispanics and Non-Hispanics alike. (Table
3) Over the 2-year period ending in the first
quarter of 2004:
| Real median weekly wages for
Hispanic workers fell from $403 to $395, down by 2.0
percent |
What we see here is predictable:
employers are shifting to newly arrived, often illegal,
Hispanic immigrants who are willing to
work for less than legal immigrants and natives.
The newly arrived immigrants
depress wages for all racial groups, especially those
they compete most directly with, i.e., other Hispanics.
This, of course, is exactly what
Harvard economist (and
Cuban immigrant)
George Borjas has
predicted.
Now it’s happening.
[Number fans
click here for tables.]
Edwin S. Rubenstein (email
him) is President of
ESR Research Economic Consultants in Indianapolis. |
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