The editors of the Christian Science Monitor note that the so-called "jobs American's won't do" do not exist.
Recent recessions have been short enough that jobless Americans who rely on government benefits waited for a "good job" to return. But this "Great Recession" has been long and deep. The unemployment rate has doubled from 4.7 to 9.4 percent, and it may keep rising into next year. Many layoffs appear permanent as whole industries have collapsed and new fields, such as clean energy, are slow to emerge. The percentage of Americans "mal-employed" – working below their skill or education – is higher than in recent recessions.
With people desperate for income, downward mobility may be on the way up. News reports show long lines of applicants for a janitor's job or for work at a factory after a federal raid clears out the illegal workers.
Maybe it's a myth that Americans won't take certain jobs. In fact, a study by the Center for Immigration Studies used 2005-07 data to look at 465 occupations. Only four had a majority of immigrants in them: plasterers and stucco masons, agricultural graders and sorters, personal appliance workers, and tailors and dressmakers.
In every other occupation, such as janitors, maids, and groundskeepers, a large majority were filled by native-born Americans. The report's conclusion: "The often-made argument that immigrants only take jobs Americans don't want is simply wrong."
In what sort of economic environment would our elites like to implement a new immigration amnesty? Americans are taking jobs that teens would normally do. The teenage unemployment rate is a record 25.5%. Highest in over 60 years.
This August, the teenage unemployment rate — that is, the percentage of teenagers who wanted a job who could not find one — was 25.5 percent, its highest level since the government began keeping track of such statistics in 1948. Likewise, the percentage of teenagers over all who were working was at its lowest level in recorded history.
The US economy does not have enough jobs for relatively smarter people (not that the average college grad is as smart as, say, 50 years ago) and so the smarter people are displacing dumber people from low skilled jobs.
Recent college graduates, unable to find higher-paying jobs, are working at places like Starbucks and Gap, taking jobs once held by their younger peers. Half of college graduates under age 25 are in jobs that do not require college degrees, the highest portion in at least 18 years, Mr. Sum said.
We should stop lower IQ immigration. Our economy runs on higher IQs. The intellectually most capable workers create the new wealth and the new industries and jobs.
Blogger OneSTDV says a robotic chef in Japan points us toward a future where our growing lower IQ population will have little or no useful work to do. This will cause problems for the rest of us.
Low-IQ individuals inevitably end up in menial labor jobs like fast-food service, lawncare, and agriculture field work. Through dysgenic fertility and low-IQ immigration, the population of low-IQ individuals is steadily increasing. As robotic technology advances, menial labor jobs will slowly be taken over by automated systems. Thus, the supply of potential workers increases while the demand for these workers decreases. Initially, the current menial labor workers will oversee the first automated systems. But, eventually, these systems will run entirely free of operation. As a result, a large segment of the low-IQ class, a class pathologically predicated towards social turmoil, will have no steady job opportunities.
We need to accept the inevitability of this future and start making policies now that prepare us for this future. Most notably we should halt and reverse the influx of immigrant labor to do low skilled and easily automatable jobs.
Larger Western state dairy farms using 40% immigrant laborers are driving a lot of Midwestern family farms out of business. But robotic milkers are going to drastically cut labor usage in dairies. Note that in a Europe that lacks cheap Mexican labor the robotic milkers are already widely used.
"We have seven working now," Brower says. In Minnesota there are about 30 systems working. "By the end of the year, I think we'll have 20." Last fall, Brower and representatives from a couple of other U.S. dealership traveled to Holland. They toured five robotic Lely dairies there, as well as the manufacturing plant.
"It was just to see how they set them up in Europe, the culture, and get to know Lely a little better," he says.
One startling fact is that in Europe, 65 percent of the new installations and upgrades are robotic.
"It's very common there," he says. "I'd say that within five years, we'll be at the same level in the U.S. I would say in 10 years this'll be very common."
I've seen a video of these automated cow milkers. The cows are trained to step into a milker stall once their milk starts feeling unpleasant to them. A human doesn't have to be around. The cows step voluntarily into a location where robotic milkers can attach and relieve them of their milk burden.
A Minnesota dairy farmer says one robot can handle 65 cows.
One unit can handle up to 65 cows, depending on the farm and production levels.
“Before, I was at about 110 cows. I have room for 120, which is about the right size for two robots,” Johansen says. “I have 105 cows right now. I have to get 120 milking by next spring.”The other issue: Reliability.Parts for the system have warranties from one to five years, depending on the part.“People I talked to, who have had them for a year or two, say they had few problems with them and that the company stands behind their product,” Johansen says. “I’ve had some issues and they’ve been extremely good to work with.”
In New Zealand robots are automating meat-processing plants.
Knife-wielding robots with x-ray vision are invading the meat-processing industry. But far from posing a threat to humans, the machines have the potential to save the industry tens of millions of dollars.
In the US Mexican illegal immigrants have flooded into meat-processing plants. We'd have more automation already if Hispanic immigration (both legal and illegal) was stopped and reversed.
Update: Audacious Epigone looks at how labor costs determine how quickly automated equipment gets adopted.
Edwin S. Rubenstein finds an interesting pattern in the recession's job numbers: In occupations with lots of Hispanics hiring has turned around but not for the rest of us.
The alternative employment survey, of households rather than business establishments, shows a decidedly bifurcated picture. While total employment declined modestly in July, non-Hispanics bore the entire decline. For Hispanic workers, July was one big job fair:
- Total employment decline in July: -155,000 (0.11 percent)
- Non-Hispanic employment: -277,000 (-0.23 percent)
- Hispanic employment: +122,000 (+0.62 percent)
Hispanic employment rose by 0.63 percent in July - the largest percentage gain since April; non-Hispanic employment declined by 0.23 percent.
Non-Hispanic employment has declined every month since April 2008.
Rubenstein shows that during the last recession Hispanic employment rose as white and black employment fell. A supply of lower priced labor displaces higher priced labor.
My take on this is that we should put the interests of our existing poor people ahead of those of potential immigrants. We also should not use taxpayer money to pay for medical care for people who are displacing Americans from their jobs.
Expect upper class Democrats to dig in their heels against immigration law enforcement when they realize that illegal alien deportation leads to more unionized and better paid jobs for blacks. How can upper class liberal Democrats get cheap labor if the native born don't have to compete against union-breakers?
But ironically the most decisive factor in the union’s victory may have been immigration enforcement raids at Tar Heel in 2007. The raids’ immediate result, the arrest of several dozen workers, was followed by the departure of hundreds of others who feared arrest on charges of violating immigration laws.
Their exodus led to an abrupt switch in the plant’s demographics. By the time of the vote on UFCW representation, the majority of workers were once again native-born black Americans, as they had been in the years immediately after the plant opened in 1992. The News & Observer noted that the “raids may have finally sealed the union’s victory…. The 2007 raids purged the plant of illegal Hispanic workers, and left behind a majority of native workers more likely to support unionization.”2
This report examines the developments at Tar Heel and concludes that the legacy of ICE’s enforcement of immigration laws includes not only the union victory, but also a decision by Smithfield to more closely examine documents workers use to verify their legal status.
Moreover, the raids, coming after years of lax enforcement of immigration laws, also opened up more jobs at the plant for authorized workers. At a time when the national recession has compounded years of job losses in North Carolina’s textile and furniture industries, the opportunity to work at Smithfield has provided a welcome boost to authorized workers, both native-born and immigrant.
Do not expect Barack Obama, putative defender of poor blacks, to celebrate immigration enforcement actions that remove competitors for blacks from the labor market. Oh no.
We do not have enough jobs for poor low skilled workers. Immigration to bring in yet more workers to compete against our lower class is a really bad idea. Yet our elites celebrate it.
A story from Colorado reports on how people with graduate degrees are applying to work at farm jobs. Another hit to the "jobs Americans won't do" myth:
Farmers can use what's called the H-2A program to recruit foreign workers to do temporary or seasonal work here in the U.S.
From July to September of 2008, there were 171 H2-A jobs posted. Thirty-nine Americans applied for those positions.
The very next quarter, in the final three months of 2008, 887 Americans applied for the 981 H-2A available. And as unemployment jumped at the beginning of 2009, so did applications from Americans; 1,799 applied for 726 jobs. That means instead of the jobs being filled by foreign or migrant workers, they are mostly going to U.S. residents.
We are going to see a lot more of this. The least educated Americans already have an unemployment rate that is at Great Depression levels.
The blue-collar sector has been hit especially hard. Some 31 million native-born and immigrant workers with a high-school degree or less are now jobless. Unemployment in this category is now a record 14.7 percent for immigrants and 19.5 percent for natives.
Why are so many Americans willing to go back to the farm? Why do they want to take jobs away from illegal aliens? Recent job losses are higher than forecast. Unemployment exceeds the worst case used in the Fed's bank stress test. If this keeps up (and it probably will) then mortgage defaults and other loan defaults will be worse and big banks will teeter once again. The employment-population ratio and weekly hours are tanking.
The Center for Immigration Studies reports immigrant unemployment is now 9.7% in the United States.
- Immigrant unemployment in the first quarter of 2009 was 9.7 percent, the highest level since 1994, when data began to be collected for immigrants. The current figure for natives is 8.6 percent, also the highest since 1994.
- The immigrant unemployment rate is now 5.6 percentage points higher than in the third quarter of 2007, before the recession began. Native unemployment has increased 3.8 percentage points over the same period.
- Among immigrants who arrived in 2006 or later unemployment is 13.3 percent.
- The number of unemployed immigrants increased 1.3 million (130 percent) since the third quarter of 2007. Among natives the increase was five million (81 percent).
- Looking at the number of immigrants holding a job shows a drop of 2.1 million (9 percent) from the third quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of this year. For natives, the drop was 4.5 million (4 percent).
- There is no way to know if the current trend will continue, but these very high unemployment rates for immigrants and natives raises the question of whether it makes sense to continue admitting so many new immigrants. In FY 2008, some 1.45 million new immigrants (temporary and permanent) were given work authorization.
Steve Sailer asks why aren't we paying the unemployed illegals to leave. Offer any illegal a free ride home as long as they consent to fingerprinting, photograph, and DNA sample to allow identification in case they try to return.
Where illegals are removed from workplaces the salaries for lower income manual labor goes up.
- As is the case in the entire industry, work at the six Swift plants is characterized by difficult and dangerous conditions.
- Like the rest of the industry, workers at these facilities have seen a steady decline in their standard of living. Government data show that the average wages of meatpackers in 2007 were 45 percent lower than in 1980, adjusted for inflation.
- We estimate that 23 percent of Swift’s production workers were illegal immigrants.
- All facilities resumed production on the same day as the raids. All returned to full production within five months. This is an indication that the plants could operate at full capacity without the presence of illegal workers.
- There is good evidence that after the raids the number of native-born workers increased significantly. But Swift would not provide information on how its workforce has changed. Swift also has recruited a large number of refugees who are legal immigrants.
- At the four facilities for which we were able to obtain information, wages and bonuses rose on average 8 percent with the departure of illegal immigrants.
- There is a widespread perception among union officials, workers, and others in these communities that if pay and working conditions were improved, it would be dramatically easier to recruit legal workers (immigrant and native).
In the face of the biggest economic downturn since the Great Depression Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress are promoting a big immigrant amnesty. They call this "comprehensive immigration reform". I see it as a labor-breaking tactic which is just what we can expect from that Democratic Party of big business.
More supply lowers price and unions do not want lower prices for labor. Unfortunately for unions the elite of Democratic Party want lower labor costs just like the elite of the Republican Party.
Union officials are embarking on what is likely to be a protracted fight with business over the programs that enable immigrants to enter the country for temporary work.
On Tuesday, leaders of two rival labor federations announced a framework for overhauling the U.S. immigration system that includes setting up an independent commission to assess how many immigrants should be admitted to fill temporary and permanent jobs without displacing U.S. workers.
The AFL-CIO and Change to Win propose that such a commission would analyze regional and industry needs to make recommendations to Congress on annual levels of employment visas. The unions argue that current visa levels are outdated and often keep immigrant workers in temporary status, with fewer benefits and job protections. Business groups say temporary-worker programs are effective and don't disadvantage workers.
Immigrants lower labor costs for business. If the immigrants are extremely productive then they develop more products and services and cause a net increase in labor demand. But most immigrants do not make big contributions to overall productivity and innovation. So business gets lower labor costs. But the rest of us do not benefit.
POSTVILLE, Iowa — When federal immigration agents raided the kosher meatpacking plant here in May and rounded up 389 illegal immigrants, they found more than 20 under-age workers, some as young as 13.
16 year olds working 17 hour shifts do not have time to join gangs. You suppose that was the motivation of the management of this plant? Keep the streets safe from Hispanic gangs? Or maybe the management liked the feeling of having slaves?
One, a Guatemalan named Elmer L. who said he was 16 when he started working on the plant’s killing floors, said he worked 17-hour shifts, six days a week. In an affidavit, he said he was constantly tired and did not have time to do anything but work and sleep. “I was very sad,” he said, “and I felt like I was a slave.”
Federal prosecutors might bring charges of violations of labor laws.
While federal prosecutors are primarily focusing on immigration charges, they may also be looking into labor violations. Search warrant documents filed in court before the raid, which was May 12, cited a report by an anonymous immigrant who was sent to work in the plant by immigration authorities as an undercover informant. The immigrant saw “a rabbi who was calling employees derogatory names and throwing meat at employees.” Jewish managers oversee the slaughtering and processing of meat at Agriprocessors to ensure kosher standards.
So why do the bad rabbis throw meat at the poor, young, low-skilled illegal aliens? The rabbis belong to the clannish separatist Lubavitcher sect who run the slaughterhouse. They look down upon those who are not chosen by God. So the locals of Postville get replaced from jobs by cheaper foreigners and the Lubavitchers look down on both local whites and Central Americans.
Immigration law enforcement actions and new state laws against illegal aliens are provoking the creation of more organized opposition by the cheap labor lobby. Cheap imported labor really amounts to privatized profits and socialized costs. But that ethical consideration doesn't seem to restrain those who want those privatized profits. Cheap labor business interests are organizing and funding an attack against immigration restriction.
Under pressure from the toughest crackdown on illegal immigration in two decades, employers across the country are fighting back in state legislatures, the federal courts and city halls.
The businesses are basically fighting back against a Republican base that supports tougher immigration law enforcement. Will the businesses use their money to buy influence and neutralize the immigration restrictionists?
Though the pushback is coming from both Democrats and Republicans, in many places it is reopening the rift over immigration that troubled the Republican Party last year. Businesses, generally Republican stalwarts, are standing up to others within the party who accuse them of undercutting border enforcement and jeopardizing American jobs by hiring illegal immigrants as cheap labor.
Tamar Jacoby is leading a new national organization that represents the interests of the cheap labor lobby. If we can manage to cut down the supply of cheap foreign labor then machines can replace the laborers if the labor supply becomes restricted enough.
The poultry processing industry wants more immigrant labor to lower its labor costs.
Now, poultry processors in Virginia and across the country are taking their case to Congress. Last week, several hundred industry leaders met in Washington to lobby for immigration changes and an improved document-checking system as well as relief from environmental rules that have doubled the price of the feed corn they buy for their birds.
If the poultry processors aren't hiring immigrants (legal and illegal) to lower costs what other possible reason could they be doing this?
"We depend on immigrants. If they all went away today, people like us couldn't operate," said Jim Mason, president of the cooperative, who visited a half-dozen congressional offices. "People think we hire Hispanics because we can get them cheaper, but it is absolutely false. We do everything the government asks and more to make sure our workers are legal, and we turn a lot of people away. But if an ID is stolen, there is nothing we can do."
What kind of suckers does he think we are?
Americans will do this work. Take away the Mexicans and Guatemalans and the work will still get done - albeit at higher hourly rates. Plenty of people would like to move up from minimum wage fast food jobs to slightly better paying jobs in factories and agricultural products processing plants.
Immigrants are pushing natives out of the British labor market.
In 1996, the last full year of Conservative government, the official projection for net immigration was 65,000 a year.
This September, the Office of National Statistics revised its projection from 145,000 a year to 190,000.
Gross immigration since 1997 has been 4.4 million, net immigration 1.6 million.
Most new jobs now go to immigrants.
It also admitted that 52 per cent of the new jobs in this period have gone to immigrants and that the number of British citizens in work is falling.
I can understand the free market capitalist motive to wage war on native workers. But when did the British Labour Party become the tool of class warfare against the working class?
The capitalists want open borders for technical workers.
As employers and professional groups ask Congress to speed up immigration reform for high-skilled workers, U.S. tech workers are fighting back.
The latest clash erupted after the U.S. chapter of the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Semiconductor Industry Assn. (SIA) sent a letter to congressional leaders Oct. 11 calling for any foreign student with at least a bachelor's degree in technology or science to be granted permanent residency if they get a job offer. The letter outraged U.S. tech workers who feel displaced both by immigration programs and outsourcing (BusinessWeek.com, 10/10/07). In response, the Programmers Guild, which represents 1,500 technical and professional workers, has drafted its own letter to congressional leaders, warning that such a policy would further disadvantage American workers.
The Semiconductor Industry Association represents capital. Capital wants cheap labor. So the SIA's position makes perfect sense. They are arguing for a position that will boost short term profits of their members. But isn't the IEEE supposed to represent practicing engineers? Is it captive to companies that employ large numbers of engineers? How does that work?
Both the House and Senate have passed by overwhelming margins legislation that would kill a Transportation Department trial granting access to up to 100 Mexican trucking companies. (Canadian trucks have enjoyed the run of the country since 1982.) The 75-23 Senate vote, on an amendment to a transportation funding bill by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., came late Tuesday night. The House passed a similar measure 411-3 in May.
Ever since Bush and his allies in Congress tried to pass a huge immigration amnesty back in May and June 2007 the backlash has scared Congress critters. This lopsided vote is yet another sign that Congress was scared by the overwhelming opposition to elite desires to import a replacement population.
The excuse for opposing the program was safety but everyone knows it was about class warfare.
Only a few Mexican trucks ever made it through Texas ports of entry before Congress nixed the program, according to Tom Wade, president of the Logistics and Manufacturing Association — Port Laredo.
Teamsters and other truck drivers oppose the Mexican trucker program, saying safety concerns and competition from lower paid drivers in Mexico will hurt economy.
“It’s all a big smokescreen to protect Teamsters,” Wade said about this week’s decision to nix the program. “This was a test to go through and check safety. These guys were going to be under the microscope.”
The supporters of Mexican truckers are forgetting to mention that they want cheaper labor and hence they support bringing in Mexican truckers to displace American truckers from jobs. This battle is about labor costs and sovereignty. Does citizenship in the US provide privileges? Should citizens have property rights in their citizenship? Or should elites be able to strip any economic value out of citizenship in order to achieve short term advantages in the form of greater profits? They certainly want to do that.
Steven Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies has a new report out showing native less skilled workers in Georgia are getting driven out of the labor market by immigrants.
- Between 2000 and 2006 the share of less-educated native-born adults (ages 18 to 64) in Georgia holding a job declined from 71 percent to 66 percent. (Less-educated is defined as having no education beyond high school.)
- Had employment rates for natives been the same in 2006 as they were in 2000, then 186,000 more less-educated native-born adults and teenagers would have been working. The number of less-educated immigrants holding a job increased by 218,000.
- Less-educated blacks in Georgia have seen a somewhat larger decline in employment, from 66 percent holding a job in 2000 to just 60 percent in 2006.
- There are nearly 800,000 less-educated native-born adults in Georgia not working. There are likely between 250,000 and 350,000 less-educated illegal aliens holding jobs in the state.
Remember when market advocates used to argue that a rising tide lifts all boats? They can't pretend to make that argument any more. Fewer natives are working and while living standards for the upper classes rose rapidly the wages for those at the bottom stopped rising.
- Wages and salary for less-educated adults in Georgia have stagnated. Over the entire six-year time period of the study, real annual wages for less-educated adults grew by just 1 percent. If there was a labor shortage, wages should be rising fast.
Think about what that means. Fewer work. Those who work do not get paid any more. So the total number of dollars flowing to lower skilled blacks has declined. A rising tide of Hispanic immigrants sinks black boats.
- Native-born teenagers (15 to 17 years of age) have also seen a dramatic decline in employment. Between 2000 and 2006 the share of native-born teenagers holding a job declined from 22 percent to 11 percent in the state.
- There are about 300,000 native-born teenagers not working in Georgia.
- Immigrants (legal and illegal) increased their share of all less-educated workers in Georgia, from 7 percent in 2000 to 19 percent by 2006. Other research indicates that at least half of this growth was from illegal immigrants.
These results demonstrate just how unfair and foolish our elites are to let in so many lower IQ immigrants who will do manual labor for cheap. The predominately black workers who are getting out-competed by Mexicans and El Salvadorans do not have some other place to run to. The Hispanic illegal alien deluge is speading across the Old South. Blacks are already pouring out of California back to the Old South. Where are the blacks supposed to go next?
Also, as my grandmother used to say "Idle hands are the devil's workshop". Our foolish immigration policy is producing a growing legion of idle hands.
The people in Georgia had best start approving bonds to build more prisons. The Hispanics (especially starting in the second generation) commit crimes at 2 to 3 times the white crime rate. Plus, idle blacks will commit more crimes. You people in Georgia need to protect yourselves from at least some of the problems that our traitorous elites have inflicted upon us.
What else you should do and rather more quickly: Contact your Senators and tell them you are opposed to immigration amnesty.
The New York Times reports what ParaPundit readers have known for years: Hispanics took most of the jobs in construction over the last few years.
According to the analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center, based on census data, Hispanic immigrants took 60 percent of the million new construction jobs created from 2004 to 2006. Those recently arrived took nearly half.
In spite of a huge bust in the housing market the US Labor Department reports only a small decrease in employment. This probably demonstrates the huge size of the poorly measured illegal alien work force.
The nation’s great housing bust has not shown up so far in official employment data. According to the Labor Department, employment in residential construction has declined by only 28,000 jobs — or some 3 percent — since its peak last fall.
“It is sort of surprising that construction employment numbers haven’t gone down more already,” said David F. Seiders, chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders. “I’m not sure about the quality of the data.”
The statistics seem to belie the debacle that has overwhelmed home building. In February, there were 15 percent fewer homes under construction and 27 percent fewer homes started than in the corresponding month of 2006. In California, 42 percent fewer building permits for new residential units were issued in February than a year earlier.
Real employment can't fall only 3% when homes under construction have dipped by several times that amount.
The article reports that many illegals formerly employed in housing are heading back into agriculture and are travelling north to Oregon and beyond looking for work. What I want to know: when will Mexican and Central American illegal aliens become a significant problem in British Columbia?
Also, how much has demand for food stamps, Medicaid, WIC, and other social programs gone up due to illegals with American-born children who have lost their jobs in construction?