The Biden economy has been great … just not for Americans
Conn Carroll
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The Biden economy has been great for economic migrants from poor countries. It has been a disaster for working Americans who have seen their real wages fall.
Almost 10 million more adults are employed today since President Joe Biden was sworn into office, and yet a majority of people tell Gallup that their personal financial situation is worse today than it was when Biden was elected.
THE MERITOCRACY HAS NO CLOTHES
What gives?
Well, for starters, the vast majority of those jobs are just people getting their old pre-COVID lockdown jobs back. The number of people with jobs peaked at 158.7 million in February 2020. Then, it fell to a low of 133.3 million in April 2020 before steadily rising to today.
But it was not until December of last year that the number of adults employed finally matched, and surpassed, the pre-COVID peak. As of December 2022, 159.2 million people had jobs, just 500,000 more than in February 2020.
And while Americans are just now getting their old jobs back, immigrants have accounted for a far greater percentage of the job recovery. We do not have data for 2022 yet, but for 2021, despite accounting for less than 17% of the population, immigrants got 33% of the jobs created.
So to the extent that Biden has overseen a job recovery, it has gone disproportionately to immigrants. Or as Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok put it to the New York Times, “When the unemployment rate goes down, you would normally expect wage inflation to go up, but that’s not what’s happening. So there must be something else moving in the labor force, and there is a very likely explanation here that immigrants are coming in and taking jobs.”
That is, in fact, exactly what is happening. From his first day in office, Biden has opened the floodgates for immigrants to pour into the country, and they are doing exactly what common sense and Economics 101 suggest they would do: take jobs from Americans and drive down wages for those who do have jobs.
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