Attention ALL PF intellectuals, this is your thread

Folks, I'm seeking a consensus......

Question; Did the ''11 million unauthorized immigrants'' screwed up our employment/unemployment figures?

Answer; IMO, most likely

Profile of the Unauthorized Population:
United States........2018 Data

Civilian Population ages 16 and older; 10,378,000

Employed; 6,803,000

Employment rate; 65.6%

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/data/unauthorized-immigrant-population/state/US

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Now, lets compare U.S. and Canada's Employment Rates, as a percentage of overall population.

Note: I've double checked Worldometer's U.S. Population from 1970, and their figures DO NOT include said 11 million unauthorized immigrants.

Note: I can't fairly compare U.S. and Canada's Employment Rates, as a percent of their ''Civilian Noninstitutional Populations'', BECAUSE ''CNP'' excludes number of institutionalized citizens, such as INCARCERATIONS, and both nation's incarceration rates per 100,000 are SIGNIFICICATNLY different/incomparable.

Note: Canada's CNP does include their active millitary personel, thus, I will add our current 1.379 million active to our past/current number of employed.

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Now, are we ready?

1. Good economic times comparison.......

U.S./Canada number of employed as a percent of overall populations.

U.S.

Total Employed, Sep 30th, 2019; 158,269,000 + Active Military Personel = 159,680,000
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_10042019.htm

U.S. 2019 Population; 329 million
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/

Percent of employed; 159.6M/329M = 48.5%

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Canada

Total Employed, Sep 30th, 2019; 19,081,000
https://tradingeconomics.com/canada/employed-persons

Canada 2019 Population; 37,411,000
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/canada-population/

Percent of Employed; 19.081M/37.411M = 51%

U.S./Canada Employment rate DIFFERENTIAL as a percent of overall population differential; 51% - 48.5% = 2.5%

U.S. 2019 Population; 329M X a differential of 2.5% = 8.2 million............WOW! What a huge difference.

WAIT A MINUTE........

Number of Employed Unauthorized Immigrants; Near 7 million

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/data/unauthorized-immigrant-population/state/US

Well, that explains it!


Comments;

 

First, no need to shout, okay?

Your OP was way too complicated. Besides, for something which is basically a point of philosophy, crunching numbers is not particularly an 'intellectual' activity, it's more of a clerical activity. Not my cup of tea. On the philosophical/intellectual side of things, there I'm willing to engage. To wit:

Well, you must ask yourself this question:

From where do jobs come?

The way to understand that, in the ultimate sense, and the ultimate sense is important, because that is where we should derive our opinions, feelings, and policies from, and in the ultimate sense, let's say you have an Island with one million people on it, and it's at full employment, about 97% employment of those who are in the job market. There would be quite a few jobs on that Island, a lot more than one, a lot more than 10, for sure.


What if there were only 10 persons on that Island? How many jobs would there be, if it were at full employment? Not more than 10.

See? Jobs comes from HUMAN NEEDS AND WANTS, 'in the ultimate sense'.

Last time I checked, people from other countries 'human needs and wants' will create jobs, collectively, to the tune of 97% of their employable value, just like the rest of the nation, in one way or the other ( as long as the country is being managed reasonably well ).

The point being, that this idea that immigrants cost jobs is specious reasoning. The economic job market is not a zero sum game.

If you are going to say that their 'illegality' changes the dynamic, well, it does, but not in any way to your personal detriment. If it's a problem, declare amnesty every so often. Hell, even Ronald Reagan supported that idea.

 

You do realize it is now 2021 so why are you dealing in PRE PANDEMIC statistics which no longer apply????

 

If we were to ask ourselves questions......

Once again, according to migrationpolicy.org, in 2018

1. IIlegal Immigrants Civilian Population ages 16 and older amounted; 10,378,000

2. 6.8 million illegal immigrants were employed.

3. Their Employment rate; 65.6% (6.8 million/10.3million)

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BLS Numbers Dec 31st, 2018

Civilian noninstitutional population; 258,888,000

Number of Employed; 156,945,000

Employment Rate; 60.6% (156.9M/258.8M)

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Question: If we were to add both Illegals and BLS Civilian Noninstitutional Populations, and Number of Employed, what would be the Employment Rate?

The Math;

Civilian Noninstitutional Populations; 258,888,000 + 10,378,000 = 269,266,000

Number of Employed; 156,945,000 + 6.8 million = 163,745,000

Employment Rate; 60.8%

A + 0.2% differential, however, very significant.

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Before and After, does change the fact that we might be the only First World Country with an undergroung employment rate of near 5% of total ''surveyed employment''.

 

You (the OP) are asking me to fix broken numbers. I can't do that. At least not without education in statistics.

 

To summarize;

A high employment rate means that a high number citizens age 16 and up are working/employed.

In 2019, thus, during good economic times, out of 160 countries, the U.S. Employment Rate ranked # 80. In other words, 79 other countries had higher employment rates.

However, compared to other countries, we don't have a TRUE Employment Rate due to the fact, we have near 7 million illegal employments. Thus, if said 7 million jobs/positions were to be legally filled, then the U.S. Employment Rate would rank near the top 10.

https://knoema.com/atlas/ranks/Employment-to-population-ratio

 

Why do US rankings matter to you? I mean it sounds more like you are less worried about the number of people working than you are about the illusion that America is Great Again!!!!

 

We need legal Americans working and not illegal criminals.

 

What a crock of garbage and far to simplistic into the bargain. In order for a job to exist someone must need something done that he either cannot or will not do himself. The number of jobs available is not limited to the number of people available with that specific skill. Take your ten man island for example. Let us say they are all farmers. Now let us say they decide they need a barn built and none of them have any idea how or anything to build it with so suddenly your ten man island requires at least another half a dozen jobs...

Hell how many people wanted cars before the first one was made? How many auto workers were there in 1865?

 

Jobs come, in the ultimate sense, from human needs and wants.

There is no way around that fact.

If you want to argue nuts and bolts logistics of how a society evolves whereupon it can make autos, and other more complicated products, etc., and the minutia & nuances of employment statistics, you might have a point, but THAT IS NOT MY POINT.

That is why my example is NOT 'simplistic'.

 

That's pretty lame. He's pointing out that there would be 7 million more LEGAL CITIZENS or LEGAL ALIENS working instead of the free loaders who moved in and took jobs from LEGAL PEOPLE. God it?

 

Who cares? The fact is there are 7 million jobs being filled now by people that should not be here. They did not create those jobs. They can't because they are illegal and cannot start a business legally. All your non-logic and reasoning isn't helping. But, that's how liberal Democrats think. With their emotions.

 

I am pretty sure, that in all my job searches, that I have never had to compete against illegal immigrants. The greatest portion of “illegal” immigrants in the US are in Southern California. Most of them work as migrant farm workers, often making less than minimum wage. They are also hired to do the grunt work on construction sites. The greatest portion of fruits and vegetables grown in the US are grown in California. Jobs picking those fruit and vegetables, or weeding between the rows, are extremely easy to get. One just has to show up on the mornings work needs to be done. Anyone who wants such a job, only has to travel to southern California and find a farm, or a construction site.

 

Someone is hiring them, are they not? Kind of funny that you frame your answer as a dig, suggesting that liberal Democrats are lacking in reason and logic, driven by emotions. Yet here you are complaining about “illegals” not being able to create jobs, not able to start a business, yet there they are, working, making money, putting down roots, raising families.

 

According to Migrationpolicy.org, in 2018, U.S. had near 7 million jobs filled by Illegals. In other words, in 2018, 95% of our jobs were filled by LEGALS.

HOWEVER, in Canada, and in most First World Countries, in 2018, 99% of their jobs were filled by LEGALS. Thus, no wonder why compared to 160 nations, we have an Average Employment Rate.

 

Who says they are freeloading? Most likely they work harder than you do. If it bothers you so much, you can grab your sun shading hat and your picking gloves and head to a vegetable farm in Southern California. All you have to do is show up in the morning. When things are in season, they tend to take whoever shows up. Even kids. If you keep up a good pace, you could pick a couple of bushels of strawberries, and make as much as $80 a day for your efforts.

 

Congratulations, you missed the point entirely.

 

No he is pointing out with the exact same number of people working, we would be higher ranked but for their citizenship status.

 

If I need work done, I need whoever is willing to do it. Real Mericans don't pick no lettuce.

 

Those illegal criminals can't work unless there are criminal employees.

 

How many 16 and above are retired?
Would that affect your numbers?

 

You may have somewhat of a point, but it's impossible to say how much of one, because you are, IMO, doing a rather poor job of making your case. Let me give some specific examples-- but first, to be clear, the points I am about to lay out, have little to do with my sentiments; I believe them to be rooted in logic and what is, effectively-speaking (since this is only a relative term, as far as human judgements go), objective thought. As such, my arguments are also not to be seen as any sort of reflection of any personal feelings about you, either; you asked for an intellectual discussion, and I am taking you at your word by offering you that, & nothing more-- first off, the numbers of illegal immigrants, both working & unemployed, are arrived at with, I must assume, a good bit of guesswork. If you were presenting a serious, deliberative argument, I would imagine your 1st order of business would be to address these numbers, the methodology for arriving at them, indications that such estimates, worldwide, are accurate, and a discussion of any factors that you feel differentiate the estimation of these numbers for our country, versus any other country. Instead, you emphasize the wide tolerances you will be adding in to the already unknown accuracy of your cited numbers. More specifically, you state that you can't compare the employment rates for the unincarcerated populations of the U.S. & Canada, because the U.S. includes imprisoned citizens in the "unemployed"-- which I am dubious of, to be honest-- but our northern neighbor subtracts them out. This makes me wonder why you could not, also, simply subtract out that figure, which you should be able to find much more reliable estimates of, than the national totals of undocumented immigrants, or the number of illegally-employed, undocumented immigrants.

Continuing with my examples of the roughness of your estimates, you proceed from saying you can't calculate the numbers for U.S. non-prisoners, to saying, above, that you will add in the number of our active military because Canada counts this as employed, but we do not (which also seems very surprising). The problem with your equalizing of the 2 countries' numbers, is that we have a much bigger military than does Canada, not just in raw numbers, but proportionally. Why does that matter, as long as we use the same formula, for both? Because either adding in U.S. troop counts or subtracting out Canadian troop counts, would give us identical methodologies, but would yield two different results.

In fact, it seems an utter assumption, unpredicated by any factual basis or history, most definitely any that you have included in your argument that, all else being equal, there would be no reason to expect anything other than parity between employment numbers for the U.S. & Canada, which is the basis of your mathematical, "proofs."

Casting more doubt upon your own fastidiousness, in these calculations, which we are implicitly trusting, you contradict yourself, by providing the U.S. noninstitutional population, which you had shortly before told us you could not do, in order to, "compare U.S. and Canada's Employment Rates, as a percent of their 'Civilian Noninstitutional Populations' "-- see quote above; compare quote, below:

I must say that this quote means very little to me, other than what I have just noted, gleaning from it-- not because I am not bright enough, or am no good with numbers, but-- because you never defined your abbreviation, "BLS," around which your entire equation revolves. Such details are part of what distinguishes a good explanation from a poor one-- the self-dishonest author of which, then goes on to blame the audience for not knowing something that he neglected to include, though it should have been realized that this would not be so patently clear, that it would not be warranted to provide this information. Nor can you appeal to some argument about limited space, because you waste space on what should be completely evident are unnecessary explanations. To wit:

YOU DON'T SAY!

These were your, "helpful explanations," to the very legitimate point made by wgabrie--

--

-- and while I am sure that poster was not expecting comprehensive statistical instruction, you responded by treating wgabrie as if he was an idiot, unable to grasp on his own, that being 80th means that there are 79 others ahead of you, or that a high employment rate means that, "a high number of citizens...are working/employed." It is condescending treatment that must have behind it, some degree of intent to belittle the reader, who responded to your request for members to give you their time & attention. As such, I will admit that I, personally, consider it a rude response. If you had actually only been giving what you truly considered beneficial instruction, this would show your ineptitude in focusing on these things, but leaving out so much else, including the meaning of the abbreviation, "BLS," which should certainly be obvious, requires more of your reader than knowing how many positive integers precede 80.

Because I am going on so long (in an effort to make my meaning clear), I will have to break my post into 2 halves, and you will need to wait until tomorrow for me to make my points which are favorable to your argument, and which addresses inaccuracy on the side opposing you. But before I end this half, I want to credit a point made by @Patricio Da Silva , that you not only failed to consider, before calling on all the Forum's intellectuals, to witness your brilliant argument, but when Patricio put it forth, you did not even acknowledge, or answer, the fact he pointed out, that these illegal immigrants contribute to the total demand, in our country, for goods & services, hence their presence also ADDS JOBS, beside taking jobs.

I will cite an example, from my own town, in the upscale county of Fairfield, CT. I once was looking for a new barber &, passing a shop just off our mid-sized city's main street, decided to give them a shot. So I went in and began to give the barber some specific intelligence on my cowlicks & so forth, as well the way I preferred to wear, and tend, my hair, when I quickly understood that this person spoke essentially no English. So a friend of the shop, who did not cut hair, but who did speak a little English, came over to assist. I explained that there were some things that I wanted to make sure were understood by the barber, before he began just giving me his standard cut. So I got the most English-fluent barber there. It turned out that his English was less than rudimentary, and he had little patience for even trying to understand my instructions, so that I ended up leaving, without a haircut. My point is that, in the heart of my predominently English speaking town, was a business, and it was certainly not alone, which catered only to speakers of a foreign language (this was some time ago, so I cannot be sure if it had been Portuguese, or Spanish, since we have sizable populations who speak each). I do not know, of course, that any who worked there were undocumented, but the chances were good that at least some were; nevertheless, the flip-side, is that there were no doubt, numerous immigrants, here illegally, among that shop's customer base, enabling the employment of those illegal workers (& possibly legal, new arrivals, as well). So it would likely be a falsehood to say that those illegals were depriving Americans of jobs because, without the presence of the illegals, the jobs would not exist in the first place. Similarly, we have markets that cater to non-native born communities, that employ all those that they do, in fact owe their very existence, to a community that seems to contain at least a moderate number of people here illegally. But this is getting into the part of my response that must wait for tomorrow.

I will simply finish my critique of your substantively wanting argument, by saying that if you are going to make statements like the one below--

-- to give them any credibility, you would need to go into details such as the sources used for, "surveyed employment," if you even know them. To my mind, though I'm not saying they aren't generally indicative of conditions on the ground, throughout the economy, I think some put too much stock in these, mathematical though they be, approximations, when it comes to more fine-tuned, specific analysis, much the way your argument, whether or not there is any truth in it, seems to shirk any comprehensive study of the complex question, in favor of a few brief equations. If you want to do comparisons, I would think you should use more than just one other country.

 

Is that how you think it works? Illegal aliens are "stealing" jobs from Americans? Do you also believe that there are elves in the North Pole stealing jobs from hard working American toy makers?

 

For your info, in the U.S., migrationpolicy.org is the most reliable source for research on both illegal and legal immigrants.

The question is; Are the following migrationpolicy.org illegal employment stats accurate?

Civilian Population ages 16 and older; 10,378,00
Employed; 6,803,000
Employment Rate; 65.6%

Of course not!

HOWEVER, most likely ball park figures when our LEGAL Employment Rate is compared to other nation's LEGAL Employment Rates.

Question; WTF is a legal employment rate?

Answer; Estimated number of illegals, and assuming ALL are employed, DIVIDED by official number of employed

For example;

Canada's estimated number of illegals; 350,000
Canada's Official Number of Employed, 2019; 19 million

350,000 DIVIDED by 19 million = 1.84%

What Is Canada's Immigration Policy? | Council on Foreign ...
https://www.cfr.org › backgrounder › what-canadas-im...Aug. 3, 2020 — New Canadians take the oath of citizenship in Toronto. ... up about one-fifth of Canada's population—one of the highest ratios [PDF] for ... Experts estimate there are 200,000–500,000 undocumented people living in Canada

U.S. Math;

U.S. Estimated Number of illegals; 11 million
U.S. Official Number of Employed 2019; 158 million
11 million/158 million = 7%


Thus, RATIONALLY, compared to the U.S., Canada has a much higher LEGAL Employment Rate.