The U.S. had greater than 9 million open roles in June, and while that’s down from the height of 12 million in March 2022, it’s still amongst the very best variety of openings we’ve had since before 2000.
“You are talking about passing up something like $1 trillion in production every 12 months that these jobs go unfilled,” David J. Bier, associate director of immigration studies on the Cato Institute, told CNBC.
With 5.8 million unemployed employees within the U.S., some economists say all of those roles are unlikely to be filled by people currently living within the U.S.
Currently, American immigration policies bar many employers from hiring unskilled migrants.
Bier explained, “In 1986, Congress banned people working without authorization within the U.S. They made it unattainable to rent someone who was within the U.S. illegally or without employment authorization.”
Now, some argue this protects employees already living within the U.S., but the general public is split almost evenly on this. Fifty-one percent of Americans surveyed by the Cato Institute worry immigration could reduce the variety of jobs available.
Meanwhile, the variety of job openings stays at historic levels. Darrell Bricker, co-author of “Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline” and CEO of Ipsos Public Affairs said, “The effect of a shrinking aging population is a decline in innovation, combined with the indisputable fact that you are just going to expire of the things that drove economic growth.”
He continued, saying there may be “an enormous opportunity for the US to blunt a few of the effects of fertility decline and population aging by having an immigration policy that could be a bit more focused, not necessarily on just accepting anybody for compassionate reasons, but for bringing in people to fill in those skill gaps.”
Bricker’s home country of Canada has a far more open immigration policy and credits its Covid pandemic recovery partially to its approach to immigration.
Dany Barah, associate professor of the practice of international and public affairs at Brown University and a Venezuelan immigrant, said, “One could argue that Canada has benefited lots from the broken migration system within the U.S.”
Bahar and his colleagues are developing what they’re calling the Occupational Opportunity Network to assist keep decision-makers informed about how migrants will help the U.S. economy grow.
“By taking a look at every occupation in every locality within the U.S. and projections and historical data, we’re in a position to actually provide you with numbers which are much higher than the present caps within the U.S. system and we hope that these numbers are going to be the idea for a comprehensive immigration reform,” he told CNBC.
Nonetheless, not all immigration experts agree we want more open borders. Simon Hankinson, senior research fellow, border security and immigration center, on the Heritage Foundation said: “We’re in a really unusual environment in the meanwhile. We’re type of testing, pushing the envelope of our national sovereignty and our ability to to soak up people.”
Hankinson explained the present visa system, specifically within the case of the HB-1 visa, undercuts the expert labor market by bringing in employees from abroad. “It’s never allowed the market to exercise that function where the wages go up after which persons are tempted to enter those fields and fill those jobs.”
Watch the video to learn more about how U.S. immigration policies impact economic growth and the way the U.S. can fix it.
