Biden Trumpets American Job Growth, Yet Work Goes to Immigrants

Construction workers install new sidewalks in downtown Palm Springs, California, in July 2023, one of about 35,000 infrastructure projects either under way or set to break ground as $700 billion in federal money begins to matriculate through states, counties, and cities nationwide. Jay Calderon/USA Today Network via Reuters

President Joe Biden’s March 7 State of the Union address touted job growth for Americans under his leadership.

“Instead of importing, importing foreign products and exporting American jobs, we’re exporting American products and creating American jobs—right here in America where they belong,” he said.

But for all that President Biden trumpeted the word “American,” employment data suggest job creation in recent years has been relatively stronger among foreign-born than native-born Americans.

The Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) database reveals that the employment level among immigration workers, both legal and illegal, has trended up since the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, it has weakly risen and, over the past half year, slumped among American-born citizens.

Between January and February of 2024, more than 1.1 million workers born outside the United States gained jobs. By contrast, native-born Americans were job losers over that period, with the employment level falling by roughly 500,000.

FRED data also show that fewer native-born Americans are employed today than were employed in February 2020, shortly before the COVID-19 response cratered the economy—130.3 million then as compared with 129.3 million today.

Immigrant employment has surged over that same period, from 27.7 million in February 2020 to 31 million in February 2024.

The Epoch Times has verified the data, which were initially brought to widespread attention by the X account “Geiger Capital.”

Notably, the Biden administration has presided over a surge in the immigrant population. In October 2023, both the raw number (49.5 million) and relative proportion (15 percent) of foreign-born Americans hit record highs.

The “Geiger Capital” post elicited a range of responses, including from logistician Ross Kennedy, who posts under the name HUNTSMAN.

“A nation without borders is not a nation… It’s a casino where the house doesn’t even pretend to hide that they’ve rigged the game,” Mr. Kennedy wrote.

Others have argued that the phenomenon is primarily or entirely the result of retirements among native-born Americans as the population ages.

FRED data on the labor force participation rate among people aged 25 to 54 show a high and rising percentage of workers in that category, at 83.5 percent—up from 83 percent in February 2020.

The Center for Immigration Studies, a “pro-immigrant, low immigration” think tank, has dived deeper into the trends among native-born, working-age Americans in a 2023 report, “Working-Age, But Not Working.”

“Using a broad definition of working age (16 to 64), the share of U.S.-born men in the labor force was 77.5 percent in April 2023, nearly the same as in 2019, pre-Covid. But this is significantly lower than the 83.1 percent in April 2000 and the 88.7 percent in 1960,” the authors, Steven Camarota and Karen Zeigler, wrote.

Their report documented particularly stark declines among native-born Americans without bachelor’s degrees.

“Excluding teenagers, the share of U.S.-born men 20 to 64 without a bachelor’s shows a decline in labor force participation from 93 percent in 1960 to 87 percent in 1980, 84.1 percent in 2000, and 77.3 percent in April of this year,” it reads.

U.S.-based Big Tech firms such as Microsoft, Google, and Meta are reported to have fired American workers and brought in foreign workers, often on restrictive H1B visas.

“This is the result of three decades of targeted replacement of the U.S. workforce through the use of employment visa programs such as the H-1B, OPT, L-1, H-2B and H-2A,” Kevin Lynn, the executive director of the Institute for Sound Public Policy, told The Epoch Times.

Janco Associates, a management consulting firm focused on the information technology (IT) sector, reported that just 700 jobs were created in IT in the United States last year.

“Based on our analysis, the IT job market and opportunities for IT professionals are poor at best,” said M. Victor Janulaitis, Janco’s CEO.

Yet the recruitment of foreign workers, frequently for IT-related roles, has continued. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ H1B lottery started just days ago.

“We will bring in another 85,000 H-1B workers through that lottery,” Mr. Lynn said.