Posted on 10/19/2019 4:51:04 AM PDT by Kaslin
America's September unemployment rate fell to 3.5 percent, the lowest level since 1969, according to the most recent Department of Labor report.
The tight labor market is forcing companies to hire disadvantaged Americans. For example, New Seasons Market, a West Coast grocery chain, is actively recruiting people with disabilities and prior criminal records. Similarly, Custom Equipment, a Wisconsin manufacturing firm, recently hired several prison inmates through a work-release program and intends to employ them full-time upon their release.
For the first time in decades, these disadvantaged Americans are finally winning significant pay increases. Over the past year, the lowest-paid 25 percent of workers enjoyed faster wage growth than their higher-paid peers.
Unfortunately, this positive trend could be short-lived. Corporate special interests are whining about a labor shortage -- and are spending millions to lobby for higher levels of immigration, which would supply companies with cheap, pliable workers.
Hardworking Americans need their leaders in Washington to see through this influence campaign and stand up for their interests. Scaling back immigration would further tighten the labor market, boosting wages and helping the most disadvantaged Americans find jobs.
The U.S. economy is the strongest it has been in years. Employers added 136,000 new jobs in September, marking 108 months of consecutive job growth.
But there's still more progress to be made. Approximately 6 million Americans are currently looking for jobs but remain unemployed. Another 4 million desire full-time positions but are underemployed as part-time workers. Millions more, feeling discouraged about their bleak prospects, have abandoned the job search altogether. Indeed, among 18 through 65-year-olds, 55 million people aren't working.
Many of these folks have limited or outdated skills. Others have criminal records or disabilities. So they might require a bit more training than traditional job applicants.
Rather than put in this extra effort, some big businesses want to eliminate their recruiting challenges by importing cheap foreign workers. These firms have instructed their lobbyists to push for more immigration, which would introduce more slack into the labor market.
The CEO of the Chamber of Commerce recently claimed that America needs a massive increase in immigration because we're "out of people." Chamber officials said their lobbying efforts would center on sizeable increases to rates of legal immigration.
The National Association of Manufacturers, meanwhile, recently released a proposal which would effectively double the number of H-1B tech worker visas, import more seasonal low-skilled laborers on H-2A and H-2B visas, and grant amnesty to illegal immigrants.
And the agriculture industry is lobbying for a path to legalization for illegal laborers and is seeking to expand "temporary" guest-worker programs to include stable, year-round positions on dairy farms and meatpacking plants -- jobs that Americans will happily fill for the right wage. The Association of Builders and Contractors, Koch Industries, and dozens more companies have called for similar measures.
There are already 45 million immigrants in the United States -- 28 million of which are employed -- and counting. More than 650,000 people crossed into the United States illegally in the past eight months alone, already exceeding last fiscal year's totals. And the U.S. government grants an additional 1 million lifetime work permits to immigrants every year.
Those figures will skyrocket even higher if business groups get their way. Such an expansion would hurt hardworking Americans.
The majority of foreigners who cross the border illegally or arrive on guest worker visas lack substantial education. Naturally, they seek out less-skilled jobs in construction, manufacturing, agriculture, and service -- and directly compete with the most economically vulnerable Americans. The labor surplus created by immigration depresses the wages of native-born high school dropouts up to $1,500 each year.
Several proposals under consideration in Washington could alleviate American workers' woes.
A recent bill from Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) would mandate all businesses use a free, online system called E-Verify, which determines an individual's work eligibility in mere seconds.
The system would make it extremely difficult for employers to hire illegal immigrants, roughly 40 percent of whom have been paid subminimum wages at some point. Without a pool of easily abused illegal laborers, businesses would raise pay for Americans.
Several senators also recently introduced the Raise Act, a bill that would reduce future levels of legal immigration.
It's time for our leaders in Washington to scale back both legal and illegal immigration. By doing so, they can further tighten the labor market and force businesses to bring less-advantaged Americans back into the workforce.
There are law firms that specialize in fake job searches used to justify bringing in people on H1B visas to work for their client companies. They must save a ton on labor costs to go through that much trouble.
Another factor that pushes businesses to hire illegal aliens is minimum wage laws. These laws make hiring young people so expensive that businesses turn to illegal aliens and pay them under the table. This saves in both wages and overhead, which adds considerably to hiring costs.
The laws appear designed to cause the importation of millions of illegal aliens. I keep wondering why, especially in an era when over 25% of young people still live with their parents. I’d like to see American citizens put first, for a change. But pro-America positions are now termed “nationalist” and reviled.
Getting a job is only step one. Accruing experience and knowledge and moving up the ladder us step two. Letting in foreigners cuts off Americans from a job AND a future.
My idea is to verify every one is working 40 hours/wk through pay check stubs. Once the 2000 hours are verified at the end of the year congress gets together and decides what the lowest incomes should be. A 10% across the board ‘wage tax’ will be used to pay for it. A 40 hour work week will make people too tired to cause trouble.
There is zero correlation between raising the minimum wage and the unemployment rate if you TAKE THE TIME TO LOOK AT THE RAW DATA. None.
Government Inc. needs it’s customer base on the dole, so they’ll vote for more government.
“There is zero correlation between raising the minimum wage and the unemployment rate if you TAKE THE TIME TO LOOK AT THE RAW DATA. None.”
If the market rate for something is 10, and you artifically raise a price to 15, you will get less of it.
Either you are wrong, or I am wrong.
Can’t have both, UNLESS something not in these simple examples is causative.
I think he means we're out of hardworking, useful, employable people. Think about it. demoncraps keep getting elected because lazy, useless, unemployable leeches exist.
I sure as heck wouldn't hire a leftist.
“Letting in foreigners cuts off Americans from a job AND a future.”
That is certainly reflected in our long-running negative birthrate. Meanwhile, foreigners are trafficked here to fill the housing vacated by idled Americans.
Meanwhile here in the NYC metro area they are building housing on every patch of available land - while the region is losing population - and will insist we need Third Worlders to fill that housing (and most importantly to Dems - FILL THE SCHOOLS).
My quick input on this is that I’d hire a lot more employees if there wasn’t such an enormous bureaucratic cost attached to each of them. Between payroll taxes, insurance and administrative work it might cost me $30/hour to hire someone and pay him $20/hour. Under those circumstances I’ll just pay someone $28/hour as a contractor and save myself a little bit of money and a whole lot of aggravation.
We said this when Obama was President and to be fair, we have to say this even under Trump... the better indicator of unemployment is the LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION RATE (LFPR)
Although the Unemployment rate is down, the LFPR is still TOO LOW at about 63%. We are moving in the right direction, but we got WAYS to go.
Candidate Trump was talking about the “real” unemployment rate being 40%. I don’t think that a decline in the headline unemployment rate from 5% to 3.5% is enough to bring the “real” very far below 40%.
Maybe now a bachelor’s degree won’t be required to work the fast-food drive-thru anymore.
JK, but only to illuminate the stupidity in some jobs that “require” a college “education” but in reality do not...
There can be no “labor shortage”.
There can only be “a shortage of people willing to work for you at $X wage”.
“For example, policy makers may decide to increase the minimum wage when economic growth is predicted so that any negative impacts on the unemployment rate due to the minimum wage increase may be offset by growth.“ This paper a also examines the relation between minimum wage and unemployment. The strongest correlation is between the proportion of businesses that are impacted by minimum wage and unemployment. In other words, if only 5% of businesses pay minimum wage, they are the sector where unemployment increases. Furthermore, the minimum wage increases cause these businesses to seek more experienced and skilled workers, effectively cutting the young inexperienced workers out of the job market. I will note that this particular paper seems not to have actually been published, so it may not be the best source of information. And since I am a scientist, not an economist, I am not the best judge of the quality of this paper.
According to this analysis by the Mises Institute, there is a lot of revisionism by minimum wage proponents with respect to the effects of minimum wage hikes. Just look at the question logically: if you have a small business and can afford to hire two minimum wage employees, and the minimum wage is increased, what must be the effect on your bottom line? What are your options to mitigate that effect? Can you realistically raise prices and not expect any effect on sales? Maybe your option is to decrease hours for your two employees and work longer hours yourself. Maybe your business is amenable to automation, like many fast food places, and you fire both employees and install a robot for a large capital outlay up front, but lower costs later (plus depreciation). Etc. Logic tells me that many of the revisionist analyses obscure the pertinent data.by burying it in other data sets so that any effect minimum wage has is swamped out by other factors. This reflects the same mindset as the politicians mentioned above, who time minimum wage increases with economic growth to counterbalance its suppressive effects on employment rates of the most vulnerable.
If minimum wage does not impact employment of unskilled workers, then why are there no more extreme minimally paying jobs such as movie ushers? Why is the youth unemployment rate so high that more than 25% of young people still live with their parents? Why do so many businesses choose to hire unskilled illegal aliens and pay them under the table, thus avoiding both minimum wage constrictions and payroll taxes?
In 2016, candidate Donald Trump successfully portrayed this as a situation where 40% of American adults were unemployed because the local steel mill shut down 30 years ago, but the reality is that the single biggest factor in the declining LFPR over the last couple of decades has been the massive growth of RETIREES.
I sure as heck wouldn't hire a leftist.
You understand the issue perfectly. Thanks to our educational system and MSM brainwashing, the unemployable rate has risen above 50%. For some companies, this means taking on the expense and complication of trying to hire H1B's. For some it means hiring illegals under the table and paying off the local Federal politician to look the other way. For smaller companies, it usually means the owner keeps doing four or five management jobs himself - even after his company becomes profitable enough to hire qualified specialists.
The damage a new hire with an entitled or "progressive" attitude can do is far more than any benefit that employee can provide, regardless (or perhaps because of) the employee's educational level.
Newer companies prefer to hire and train new people - they have learned that "experience" is often just polite shorthand for a slacker who knows how to game the corporate system. That newer company usually prefers to bring in young people with clear minds and train them in that company's methods and philosophies. All things being equal, it would be better if those people were young American citizens - but the intense brainwashing our government-media complex gives them starting at age five makes that difficult to accomplish in these times.
It is true
I visit manufacturers most of which need qualified workers. They simply are not available.
There are people looking for jobs but are either tainted with drugs or won’t reliably show up for work.
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