SERIOUS MATH PROBLEM
Columnist Chris Tomlinson says employment numbers tell us that as the U.S. runs short of workers, we need an immigration solution.
Good help is hard to find, especially when the talent pool is near empty.
Employers advertised 7.1 million job openings in August, the largest number since the Department of Labor began keeping records in 2000. But only 6.2 million Americans are looking for work.
The U.S. labor deficit is holding back economic growth. Only one solution can meet the needs of American businesses and strengthen the economy: wholesale immigration reform.
Wholesale means keeping the workers we have and recruiting more. Mathematics, not politics, makes the case. Demand for labor is too high, and there are not enough U.S. citizens to fill these jobs.
Companies are expanding at a record pace, hiring a record 5.78 million people in August, the latest statistics available. And yet there are about 1 million more job openings than citizens in the workforce, and most unemployed Americans would have a job if they had the right skills.
Critics will point out that there are far more than 6.2 million unemployed people in the critical 25-54 prime working-age group.
Federal statistics show about 18 percent of prime working-age Americans are currently unemployed, which leaves about 12 million people who don’t have jobs and are not looking for one. Many of these people are socalled discouraged workers.
Economists believe that when unemployment rates drop and wages go up, discouraged workers will rejoin the labor market. But a large portion of the 12 million are not discouraged. They are doing other things.
About 4.8 million stay home and care for children or disabled family members because they cannot afford hired help. Approximately 4 million are on disability and will likely never return to work. Almost a million are in school acquiring new skills, according to federal surveys and research by Brookings, a Washington think tank.
The most you might squeeze back into the workforce is another 1 million workers, but 57 percent of them have only a high school diploma. And a good portion have a drug addiction or mental health problems.
Aggravating matters, the workforce is shrinking as baby boom-
retire faster than young people are entering the workforce. This structural deficit could last a decade, with the biggest impact in skilled trades, manufacturing and health care.
If we’re down a million workers, we cannot afford to start deporting workers, even if they did not enter the country legally.
More than 1 million workers currently employed in the U.S. are so-called Dreamers, immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children. The Trump administration has canceled the Obamaera program to allow them to remain in the country.
Another 8 million workers also crossed the border illegally to work in the U.S. as adults. These immigrants came to fill a shortage of people in the skilled trades, such as carpentry, welding and construction work. They were also ready to fill the jobs Americans did not want, such as kitchen help and farm work.
If President Donald Trump and other Republican leaders keep their promises to deport all workers in the country illegally, about 9 million jobs would come open in addition to the current 1 million vacancies.
The U.S. economy would collapse into a depression. Mass deportations would paralyze vast sectors of the U.S. economy, particularly agriculture, construction and food service. Texas would lose 9 percent of its workforce at a time of 4 percent unemployment.
“The United States is fundamentally out of people,” Tom Donahue, president and CEO of the conservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a major policy speech last month. “We need to come up with a tough but fair process for the millions of undocumented people living in the U.S. to have the opportunity to earn a legal status.”
The American economy will likely need an additional million more immigrants. By 2024, the U.S. will need 438,000 more food service personnel, 348,000 home health aides, 248,000 more jan- itors and maids, 147,000 more construction workers, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
This argument is about math, not politics. Yet politicians hold the answer.
Trump built his career demonizing immigrants who came to this country illegally. But there is a small window between now and his re-election campaign for him to strike a deal and claim that he fixed America’s immigration problem.
The approach, though, must come from businesspeople, not the opposition party. Donahue suggests a deal that includes a path to residency if companies agree to use an electronic system to verify immigration status and Congress decides to spend more on border protection.
That’s a deal every business leader should support.