5 APRIL 2024 

Immigration in America Is Fueling Record Economic Growth

Immigrants are crucial to the nation’s economic comeback, creating and filling essential jobs that will inject $7 trillion into the economy over 10 years

 Washington, D.C. - As record job growth continues under President Biden, leading economic voices are highlighting the crucial role that immigrants are playing in the labor market. The data adds to a growing chorus of elected officials, industry leaders, and advocates that are calling for expanded work authorization and protections that would allow both newly arrived and long-settled immigrants to strengthen local economies and invigorate cities. Despite an enduring hyper partisan divide in Congress that has consistently left comprehensive immigration reform on the cutting room floor, immigrants continue to prove themselves essential to American prosperity by mitigating the fallout of a tight labor market and high inflation.

  • New York Times: “Immigration is helping to meet hiring demand, and may explain data mysteries”

“Immigration has been robust over the past two years, creating a flood of potential workers that is both supercharging the job market and leading to surprises and quirks in closely watched economic data.”

  • Semafor via Steven Rattner: "By adding millions of new workers to the labor market, the immigration surge has lifted payrolls and growth, and potentially helped keep a lid on consumer prices, according to recent research."

  • Steven Rattner: “As the native-born workforce ages into retirement, immigrants have been essential to America's post-COVID labor market recovery.”

  • Bloomberg: “Immigration Helps US Jobs Grow Faster Than Powell’s Speed Limit”

“The US jobs market probably will be able to run significantly hotter again this year than Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has reckoned is sustainable in the long run thanks to increased immigration.

At the heart of the issue is what’s known as neutral payrolls growth — a speed limit, of sorts, for how fast payrolls can grow without tightening the labor market and stoking wage pressures. Economists contend that immigration is boosting that monthly breakeven rate, which they estimate at anywhere from 160,000 to 265,000 this year.

That’s markedly higher than the roughly 100,000 pace Powell identified back in 2022 as the long-run cruising speed for jobs growth and compares with average monthly gains of 251,000 last year.”

  • Yahoo Finance: “Immigration a key component to US jobs growth: Acting Labor Secy.”

“[U.S. Labor] Secretary [Julie] Su specifically attributes recent immigration statistics to sustainable job growth amid inflation: ‘I would say that this is an example of how a strong economy overall is just good for everybody. This labor market has pulled in everyone. And so we're seeing certainly growth for immigrants... We're a nation in which growth has often included the contributions of immigrants. But it's not just for the immigrant community. Just like the sectors in which we have seen growth are broad-based, the benefits across different communities have also been really broad-based.’"

  • TIME: “Immigration Is Powering the U.S. Economy”

“Now that we know that the labor force was much larger due to the increased immigration, we are no longer so concerned about employment growth running too hot and pushing up prices. For those keeping an eye on the monthly employment reports, we calculate that if strong immigration continues this year, employment growth of nearly 200,000 workers a month is consistent with a healthy labor market. That number is nearly double what would have been sustainable without the pickup in immigration.”

“The emerging consensus: a surge in immigration. It not only explains inconsistencies in the jobs data but suggests the economy can keep adding plenty of jobs without overheating. That in turn would let the Federal Reserve still consider interest-rate cuts.”

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The Immigration Hub is a national organization dedicated to advancing fair and just immigration policies through strategic leadership, innovative communications strategies, legislative advocacy and collaborative partnerships.