A Labor Shortage? One common argument for not doing anything about illegal immigration or even for offering illegal immigrants amnesty is that there is a shortage of the type of labor provided by illegal immigrants. But if there was a shortage, then wages and employment should be increasing as employers try desperately to recruit new workers and retain the workers they already have. As already discussed, however, the opposite has been happening. Employment and wages have declined for the less-educated. Thus, there is no empirical evidence of a labor shortage. The only evidence of a labor shortage comes from employers of low-wage workers.
Jobs American Won’t Do? Another common argument for tolerating illegal immigration is that immigrants only do jobs that Americans don’t want. There are two fundamental problems with this argument. First, there are no jobs done only by immigrants. Of the 465 civilian occupations, only four are majority immigrant. These four occupations account for less than 1 percent of the total U.S. workforce. Most of the jobs often thought of as predominately immigrant jobs, are in fact overwhelming done by native-born Americans. For example, the American Community Survey from 2005 to 2007 showed that 55 percent of maids and housekeepers are U.S.-born, as are 58 percent of taxi drivers and chauffeurs, 63 percent of butchers and meat processors, 65 percent of construction laborers and 75 percent of janitors.8 It is simply makes no sense to argue that no Americans want such jobs when, in fact, most of the people doing this type of work were born in the United States.
The second problem with the argument that no Americans want these jobs is that wages, benefits, and working conditions have an enormous impact on the desirability of a job. If there really are jobs that Americans will not do at a given wage, then employers can improve compensation or working conditions to attract more workers. We can raise wages in low-wage sectors of our economy, secure in the knowledge that this will not spike inflation because the bottom of the labor market accounts for such a tiny fraction of total economic output. Employers who want access to cheap labor may argue forcefully that they need the workers, but the fact remains that improving compensation and working conditions is the primary way they should deal with this problem. They can also adopt different recruitment strategies or offer non-wage inducements to attract and retain workers, such as providing transportation or more flexible work hours. Allowing the free market to work in this way could significantly improve the labor market prospects for some of the working poor.
“We can raise wages in low-wage sectors of our economy, “
Who is this “we”? Many businesses cannot afford to pay more, because they operate on very low profit margins. If they paid higher wages, they’d be out of business and ALL their workers would become unemployed.
Look, an illegal nanny in California was making $20/hour before the recession. That’s tax free.
Why do you think that so many families in CA were hiring illegals to work in their homes instead of legal workers? -—because no legal workers applied for the job. Of course the legal worker would not have been paid $20/hr, because the employer would have lowered the pay to make up for the employer share of payroll taxes.
In the Seattle area, stores cannot hire clerks for less $13/hr. People would rather collect unemployment or welfare. Target was hiring people from another county and paying someone to drive them an hour away and paying the employees for their travel time because no one near Seattle wanted the job.
“One common argument for not doing anything about illegal immigration or even for offering illegal immigrants amnesty is that there is a shortage of the type of labor provided by illegal immigrants.”
There is a shortage of workers for that type of labor because it is illegal to pay people what that labor is worth.
In other news, unemployment is over 9%.
Go figure.
It’s illegal to pay someone a fair wage for a job that’s only worth $5.00 per hour. If the government didn’t criminalize employment, we’d have fewer unemployed.