11 Million Jobs?

President Biden’s State of the Union speech came and went and the country does not reflect, in total, what he tried to describe as the dynamic economics he says is all around us.

Certainly, the country is not a complete flop, nonetheless, it is nowhere near where it should be. Yes, it was fantastic news that January’s job numbers of 500,000 jobs dwarfed the numbers “experts” predicted. Skeptists, like me, however, see thousands of jobs that are unfilled all around us. I see less GDP (Gross Domestic Production); less growth.

Driving through Tijuana and entering San Diego, however, one sees gigantic differences in attitudes of people and the job economy on the border in contrast to the rest of the U.S.A.

On the Mexican side, buses arrive at Tijuana’s gigantic “camionera,” the bus depot and airliners that land at Abelardo Rodriguez International Airport are filled with people coming to Tijuana from all 33 states of Mexico for opportunity, for jobs, for education and for the opportunity of joining the over a million people who legally cross the American/ Mexican border and for the higher standard of living those border crossers live every day.

San Diego, California, economists and Chamber of Commerce types point out that studies show that Mexicans who jam the border northward every day – thousands of cars and people – spend over $3 billion dollars a year in and around San Diego County’s three million people.

Over a thousand Mexican trucks and commercial vehicles cross into San Diego every day. That many or more cross from the U.S. into Baja California carrying millions of dollars worth of goods and material supply booming Tijuana, Tecate and Mexicali’s industrial base that grows by thousands of new jobs every year.

The Tijuana and Mexicali boom is such that billboards throughout Tijuana offer signing bonuses to new employees that range from $4,000 pesos ($200 USD) to $25,000 pesos ($1,300 USD). They are not alone. In San Diego, a citywide ambulance company, Faulck from Denmark, is offering $50,000 bonuses to be paid in regular paychecks.

All this is swirling around us in the 6-million-plus Metropolitan San Diego/ Tijuana economic engine that sees unemployment at less than three percent. Nonetheless, thousands of jobs go begging in San Diego – thousands. Nationally millions of jobs go begging today.

Is the instant job situation because everyone qualified to work is working? Obviously not as the unemployment figure, while low is not 99%. The real reason is the current workforce percentage of eligible working people is low, too low to fill vacant jobs.

The workforce is those willing to work as a percentage of the total population composed of age, health, educational and personal desire components.

In 2008, the workforce peaked at 67.1% of the total eligible population. It has been going down since to 61.6% in 2022. By contrast, American Blacks do slightly better than the general population at 62.4%. Hispanics, however, dominate with a 66.3% rate of work participation. They are also the youngest workforce and every college graduation day their educational level increases exponentially.

Simply put, most everyone who wants to work in the U.S. is working. Still the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States report that there are 11 million vacant jobs in the U.S. today.

We now see the harm that Stephen Miller and his boss, the modern Boss Tweed, President Donald J. Trump did to the U.S. economy during the years they limited immigration. Immigrants seek work, any work. No immigrants, smaller workforce; less GDP, less growth.

Trump and Miller did their best to end immigration. The results – fewer people willing to work. The largest immigrant group, Hispanics from South of the Rio Grande and their families – plus fellow native-born American Hispanics – are now proportionally the largest percentage of the workforce and will be forever.

Remember that when you see immigrants sleeping on sidewalks in El Paso, Texas. Or billboards in Tijuana offering thousands of bonus pesos to take a job, or Americans offered $50,000 to work in San Diego. A $50,000 bonus to work in San Diego … REALLY?

Contreras is a former United States Marine, an author and newspaper columnist, a political consultant and hosts the Contreras Report on YouTube, ROKU television and Amazon’s Firestick.