Some Interesting Demographic Data On The Workforce Worth Noting...
More data on workforce, economics and immigration.
Quick Facts:
Roughly 2.7 million more Americans are retiring earlier than predicted
About 50 percent of the labor market’s recent growth came from “foreign-born workers”
The U.S. has 9.5 million job openings in the U.S., but only 6.5 million unemployed workers
American women are not producing enough children to replace existing population
Americans currently view immigration as the nation’s biggest problem
Following Monday’s article about the Economic Policy Institute’s raising a “straw man” argument on immigration, there have been a few articles, studies or polls released that are worth noting for those interested in workforce trends.
First, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) published an article stating there is An Unanticipated Retirement Wave Is Happening Right Now in the U.S.
Key Takeaways:
The U.S. currently has roughly 2.7 million more retirees than predicted, Bloomberg reports, according to a model designed by an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. That’s up 80 percent from six months ago, when there were roughly 1.5 million more retirees than anticipated. By contrast, prior to the pandemic, there often were fewer retirees than expected. [Emphasis added.]
Second, the Washington Post published a article on Tuesday about immigration and the economy, stating: “Immigration has propelled the U.S. job market further than just about anyone expected, helping cement the country’s economic rebound from the pandemic as the most robust in the world.”
Using the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) data that we noted on Monday, the Washington Post writers note that “About 50 percent of the labor market’s extraordinary recent growth came from foreign-born workers between January 2023 and January 2024.”
However, like the EPI, WaPo’s writers lump legal and illegal immigrants into one category: “foreign-born workers.”
In other words, although the WaPo writers acknowledge a “record number of migrants have crossed the southern border since President Biden took office,” there is no data distinguishing between lawful employment and unlawful employment in the labor market job growth.
"Republicans have increasingly campaigned on the idea that immigrants have hurt the economy and taken Americans’ jobs,” WaPo’s writers point out, again without distinction between legal and illegal immigration. “But the economic record largely shows the opposite.”
Third, according to a new Gallup poll also released on Tuesday, Americans now name immigration as the most important problem facing the U.S.
Fourth, the Institute for Family Studies published an article stating that a record share of young adults will never marry.
Among other things, the IFS notes, “This will have dramatic consequences for American society. It points to long-term fertility declines being hard to prevent, since marriage is a major factor shaping fertility behavior.”
What does this mean? Well, as Business Insider pointed out last week: “The average American woman is having just 1.6 children on average, per World Bank data — well below the figure of 2.1 that demographers say is needed to keep a population stable.”
It also means that, as “average American” women are not having kids to replace the current population, without a fix to our broken immigration system, the U.S. labor market shortages, as well as wage inflation, will not likely end anytime soon.
“Right now, the latest data shows that we have 9.5 million job openings in the U.S., but only 6.5 million unemployed workers,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce states. “We have a lot of jobs, but not enough workers to fill them. If every unemployed person in the country found a job, we would still have nearly 3 million open jobs.”
What to make of this? As we pointed out in Monday’s article, two-thirds of Americans say immigration is good for the country. But this is only true, as Gallup points out, when Americans are asked specifically about legal immigration.
America needs immigrants. More importantly, as opposed to creating straw man arguments which hurt everyone, America needs the border crisis and its immigration system fixed.