Guest Post by Joe Guzzardi
In June, about four million teenagers will graduate from high school, and another three million or so will earn associate or four-year university degrees. The happy graduates should view cautiously the strong May Bureau of Labor Statistics report that showed growth in employment and wages. While the economy added 223,000 jobs in May and for the year average hourly earnings increased 2.7 percent, an ever-expanding labor force assures that essentially stagnant wages will continue to plague American workers and keep the U.S. locked in a wage recession.
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Congress, arriving back on Capitol Hill this week from what most would call a vacation, but members like to identify as “constituent work days,” always pledges to have young Americans’ futures at heart. Yet, immediately upon its return, Congress will begin its umpteenth round of immigration haranguing. And as it always does, Congress will omit from its debate the deleterious effect millions of employment authorization documents issued to immigrants, both permanent residency and temporary status, has on the labor pool, including these seven million job-seeking graduates.
Front and center on the upcoming congressional agenda are deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACAs) and DREAMers. DACAs, who have work permission, and DREAMers both want full legal status. With legal immigration compounding at the rate of more than one million annually year after year, employment-based visas adding about 750,000 guest workers to the economy each year and asylum approvals, the labor market continuously expands – outpacing job creation – and by extension gradually squeezes out large segments of the American working-age population.
Over-immigration, and Congress’ steadfast refusal to address its impacts, harms not just recent graduates, but also older, minority and military retiree job seekers.
Pew Research: A recent study shows Living with a parent is more common than ever.
For recent graduates though, unemployment and under-employment have forced more back home to live with parents, rather than entering other types of domestic housing situations. In 2014, for the first time in more than 130 years, adults ages 18 to 34 were more likely to be living in their parents’ home than they were to be living with a spouse or partner in their own household. Today, the young adults in this age range who remain at home still is high.
Like America’s youth, another economically struggling demographic is retired military personnel. According to a recent report, veteran job seekers are struggling to find meaningful employment, with nearly one-third self-identifying as underemployed. Congress’ immigration obsession also ignores millions of American black and Hispanic minorities who need employment.
Overall, 40 million people live in poverty in America. The United Way ALICE Project found that an estimated 50.8 million households, or 43 percent of households, can’t afford basic essentials, including housing, food, transportation and health care.
No intellectual argument can be made that more immigration helps America’s young, its poor, its workers or its unemployed. Yet immigration continues at unsustainably high levels as if it were on autopilot, much to the voting public’s dismay and consternation.
This immigration issue is all (as always) about money. The American worker, by virtue of their legal citizenship in “the land of the free” has an enormous amount of economic baggage around their neck, that a foreigner simply does not have. This is an invisible (as in no one wants to actually talk about it) impediment and disadvantage the American citizen worker has vs. the illegal, H1B visa, or temporary guest worker.
That enormous economic baggage has to do with student debt, health care expenses, regulation and taxes. The foreign worker – either in the US (educated abroad, and subsequently not toting an anchor of student debt, and not obligated with US Government structural deficit inflation) or in China, does not have the pre existing payment obligation to Sallie Mae, the Health monopoly or the US Government.
It is simply a case of the cost structure here being too high. Government and trade unions killed their own golden goose by going way off the rails with their “wants” (using the American worker as their battery) and opened Pandora’s box. It started with only a few large corps “outsourcing” to cut costs in some divisions, but as the Chinese and other countries realized they could use this to their advantage, and the companies found they could outsource more divisions / entire operations, it was too late. Now, unfortunately we need big changes that will hurt to right the ship structurally. Lots of people will need to readjust their expectations, and there will need to be some common sense in immigration as well as the cost structure of healthcare, taxes, pensions etc. to come back in to balance.
Because politicians (and the people that elect them) seem to have no interest in changing their gravy train, the balance is going to have to be forced through failure of each imbalance systematically. That slow, drawn out failure is going to seem like water torture, but fail they will.
About all a young person can do, having gone out in to a world that us olders have thoroughly ruined, is to keep your personal “cost structure” minimal. Make sure that you do not have forced obligations going too far in to the future. This will keep you flexible and able to take advantage of opportunity, where others that have long term obligations (debt, large tax payments, etc.) won’t be able to. Also, stay informed and DO NOT listen to mainstream media, guidance counselors or anyone else that recommend anything that will in-debt you beyond about a year.
How are H1Bs protected from the healthcare monopoly and the US government?
Joe might be right, I only have one touch point to judge this by, but my gardener of over twenty years can not find anyone to mow lawns any more. He tells me that they all went back to Mexico when Drumph got elected. So maybe immigration is a problem, and maybe it was a problem but things changed.
But what Rob know?
The data from 1880 is skewed cause back then about 50% of the population lived on family farms so naturally a lot more lived in their parents house. Today it’s more like 2%. As for 1940 it was likely due to the depression. Today its because of the wonderful economic boom that is the bestest in history according to republicans. Yay Trump! MAGA!
PS, Tell Q I prayed.
Only 2% of today’s 18-34 demographic live at home? You be smokin crack.
Only 2% live on farms. Duh.
Meatball hires cheap labor to do shit he is too lazy to do like all the others.You deserve to beat like Christ was before he was put on the cross.Shame on you.
Just kidding but you do deserve to be tared and feather .
The fact is American businesses like cheap foreign labor because it puts more money in THEIR pockets when they don’t have to provide healthcare, benefits and paid vacations.
Greetings,
Were I just out of college then I’d be worried that potential employers would view me with suspicion given the years I just spent in an anti-capitalist indoctrination center. As a business owner, I view all recent college attendees with extreme suspicion as a simple majority of them are full blown communists.
Why would I hire someone opposed to the economic system that I favor??? Well, I guess that is what Starbucks is for.
My neighbor sold his house to some 20-somethings a few years back. New people are a married couple but they also have a sister & boyfriend living there and another random renter. Owning couple just had a kid last year so there is a newborn under the roof too.
So a pretty typical 4 bed/2.5 bath suburban house that used to be occupied by a traditional family of four now has five adults and one child under its roof. Worth noting is these are all college educated whitey people, not immigrants. I don’t mind them as neighbors but wondering if this is the new normal for young adults. Takes a village to swallow that mortgage in an upper middle class ‘hood.