The United States is gaining jobs—about 800,000 so far this year. But the employment report suggests native-born Americans are not getting those jobs, and they are instead going to legal and illegal immigrants. NTD explores this premise with Peter Earle, a senior economist at the American Institute for Economic Research. He says that unprecedented mass illegal immigration is distorting the true picture of the economy.
“The steady-state rate [for job creation] is about 100,000 jobs per month. But now that we’ve seen it up to 200,000 or 300,000 per month, basically we are left with the conclusion that those are mostly jobs that are being taken by undocumented people,” said Mr. Earle.
“And they are much harder to track in the data other than that. When they get unemployed, they typically don’t or can’t file for unemployment, so there’s a lot of weird data out there. But it certainly looks as if many of the jobs being created are … off the books and simple, low-skilled jobs,” he said.
