How immigrant workers in US have helped boost job growth and stave o a recession
MIAMI (AP) — Having
ed economic and political chaos in Venezuela, Luisana Silva now loads carpets for a South Carolina rug company. She earns enough to pay rent, buy groceries, gas up her car — and send money home to her parents.
Reaching the United States was a harrowing ordeal. Silva, 25, her husband and their then-7year-old daughter braved the jungles of Panama’s Darien Gap, traveled the length of Mexico, crossed the Rio Grande and then themselves in to the U.S. Border Patrol in Brownsville, Texas. Seeking asylum, they received a work permit last year and found jobs in Rock Hill, South Carolina.
“My plan is to help my family that much need the money and to grow economically here,” Silva said.
Her story amounts to far more than one family’s arduous quest for a better life. The millions of jobs that Silva and other new immigrant arrivals have been Hlling in the United States appear to solve a riddle that has confounded economists for at least a year:
How has the economy managed to prosper, adding hundreds of thousands of jobs, month after month, at a time when the Federal Reserve has aggressively raised interest rates to Hght in"ation — normally a recipe for a recession?
Increasingly, the answer appears to be immigrants. The in"ux of foreign-born adults vastly raised the supply of available workers after a U.S. labor shortage had left many companies unable to Hll jobs.
More workers Hlling more jobs and spending more money has helped drive economic growth and create still-more job openings. The availability of immigrant workers eased the pressure on companies to sharply raise wages and to then pass on their higher labor costs via higher prices that feed in"ation. Though U.S. in"ation remains elevated, it has plummeted from its levels of two years ago.
“There’s been something of a mystery — how are we continuing to get such extraordinary strong job growth with in"ation still continuing to come down?” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute. “The immigration numbers being higher than what we had thought — that really does pretty much solve that puzzle.”
While helping fuel economic growth, immigrants also lie at the heart of an incendiary election-year debate over the control of the nation’s Southern border. In his bid to return to the White House, Donald Trump has vowed to Hnish building a border wall and to launch the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” Whether he or President Joe Biden wins the election could determine whether the in"ux of immigrants, and their key role in propelling the economy, will endure.
The immigration boom was a surprise. In 2019, the Congressional Budget O ce had estimated that net immigration — arrivals minus departures — would equal about 1 million in 2023. The actual number, the CBO said in a January update, was 3.3 million.