An interesting facet of the American job market has to do with a direct
connection to W.W.II - the "baby boom generation." (those born
between 1947-57). A noticeable increase in enrollment in public and elementary
schools grew steadily from 1964 and peaked at 46 million in 1971 due to
this large group of children entering school. As they graduated or left
school, the rate declined steadily for 13 years, but the rate again grew
in 1984 when the children of those baby boomers, the "baby boomlets,"
came of school age. Although it has not reached the peak level of 1971,
by 1998 their projected enrollment is expected to surpass this number (National
Current Employment Statistics.
Ages and Job Opportunities:
Obviously this enrollment study has direct ties to the job market. As the
baby boomlets leave school, it is assumed that they will join the labor
force. The civilian labor force in 1992 was 127 million. The projection
for the labor force on 2005 is projected at 151 million (National Current
Employment Statistics. Now lets do some
basic economics... what happens when the demand for jobs is greater than
the supply? Seeing as the population will have more and more competition
for jobs, there will definitely be pressure put on employees in general. In trying
to facilitate the unemployed, an interesting thing happens. More jobs will
be offered, but at what price? Lower wages. (see employment changes @
http://stats.bls.gov/oco2003.htm) An increase in the number of unemployed
will drive up the competition for jobs and at the same time decrease the
wages paid for those jobs. Why? Because people are so desperate for a job
that they are likely to accept an offer even if the wages are below what
should be paid.
Besides the frightening concept of a growth in new workers is an equally
alarming increase of experienced workers. It seems that retirement is being
postponed longer and longer, and as this occurs more competition is the
effect. Baby boomers are finding that they will not be able to retire because
they cannot afford to. According to study done by the Rand Corp. a public-policy
research group based in Santa Monica, California, those retiring or soon
planning on doing so have at the best done an adequate job of saving - and
this is only true if considering Medicare, Social Security, and their private
pensions continue to deliver at or near present levels. Rand also found
that the total assets of the median households nearing retirement was at
about $ 99,350. This alone is hardly enough to support a retired couple
for three years given the current standard of living.
Another problem which arises from this situation is that the younger, inexperienced
potential workers are often overlooked in favor of those older with more
job experience and more stability. As the baby boom generation matures,
the number of workers aged 55 to 64 will be on the increase. Experts say
that even while the first career may end at 58, boomers should expect to
work into their 70's, although a lot of these jobs will be part time. By
the year 2005 this group will compose 14 percent of the labor market, up
12 percent from 1992. However, some expert believe this is not too threatening
to younger workers considering that the number of workers under this age
group compromises around 70 percent.
With a lack of experience and education, younger workers will have difficulty
finding suitable jobs. Jobs for high school drop-outs will become more limited,
and the illiterate unemployed will probably not even be considered for most
jobs. In addition, many of the occupations expected to grow most quickly
between 1992 and 2005 are those with higher earnings. These will probably
be taken by those more experienced (baby boomers) leaving even fewer high
paying jobs for those entering the work force(for more information on the
history of the job market click on this photo)
Immigration and Population Growth
The November 1993 estimates of the US Census Bureau for America's population
increase is startling. By their predictions, The US population will increase
from 250 million in 1990 to 392 million by the year 2050. This is a 50 percent
increase! At this time the US has the fastest population growth in any developed
nation. Half of the increase is due to growth in US citizens (including
those born in the US by foreign parents), while the other half is due to
the increase in immigration after 1990. Since anyone born in the US is automtically
an American citizen, the statistics may be skewed. In fact, approximately
two of every three babies born in L.A. County hospitals are born to illegal
aliens, but theses babies would be counted as citizens in the census (Michael
T. Lempres, "Getting Serious about Illegal Immigration," National
Review, February 21, 1994). Therefore, it is hard to see truly where the
population growth is coming from. The Census reported late last year that
20 percent of the country's foreign-born population arrived in the last
five years (David Bowermaster, "The Immigration Battle: Closing the
Golden Door," US News and World Report, September 25, 1995).
Why the large number of immigrants to the US? Considering its notoriety
for being the land of opportunity, the reason is clear. One illegal alien
coming from Mexico figured that he could make at least $12,000 a year in
Houston as opposed to the $1,500 he made the year prior doing odd jobs in
Mexico (Sam Howe Verhovek, "With Detentions Up, Border is Still Porous:
Halted on Rio Grande, Vowing to Return," The New York Times, Tuesday,
February 13, 1996). Besides that, the world population is growing at a rate
of nearly one billion a decade. Since 90 percent of that increase is happening
in underdeveloped countries with few job opportunities, this only increases
migration pressures. Sadly, although this places strains on our environment,
resources, and economy, the US has little or no population policy. In California
alone the immigration strain is expected to increase the population from
30 million today to 50 million by 2010. At this time, legal and illegal
immigration add around 1.2 million people each year to the US work force.
That is the equivalent of adding two more Washington DC's each year!!! (Federation
for American Immigration Reform or F.A.I.R. January 1995, sg).
Steps being taken to restrict immigration are of course the border patrol and then internal measures such as the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is one of the few federal agencies to be recently given a large budget increase. It is hiring 1,000 new agents to patrol the border, a 20 increase in the size of the force. This will enable them to step up preventative measures such as motion detectors, night-vision devices and a computerized fingerprint file for every detainee. However, will even this be enough to slow illegal immigration? At this time in Brownsville, Texas there are 138 agents (or 46 in each eight-hour shift) to patrol the 68 miles of winding riverfront, and thousands of miles between the border and inland checkpoints. The odds favor the immigrants. One Brownsville Patrol agent estimated that even as they stopped a group of 15, three or four groups of similar size were probably crossing the river someplace uncaught (Sam Howe Verhovek, "With Detentions Up, Border is Still Porous: Halted on Rio Grande, Vowing to Return," The New York Times, Tuesday, February 13, 1996).
As for internal measures, the IRCA was implemented to curtail undocumented
migration and legalize established illegal populations in the US. This law,
combined with the employment differentials between the US and Mexico, reduced
the number of undocumented Mexican crossing the border between 1987 and
1990 (Richard C. Jones, "Immigration Reform and Migrant Flows: Compositional
and Spatial Changes in Mexican Migration After the Immigration Reform Act
of 1986," The Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Dec,
1995). It also included penalties for employers who hire illegal immigrants,
something which was previously non-existent. Regardless of this, many employers
do not stop because they do not believe they are doing anything wrong, and
households or small businesses are seldom penalized.
This brings to question what kinds of jobs immigrants are filling. Some
experts believe that one of the most sizable portions of off-the-books workers
is that of domestic help such as housekeepers (Gary S. Becker, "Illegal
Immigration: How to Turn the Tide," Business Week, February 22, 1993).
On a personal note, being from Texas I have been a witness to many of the
occupations held by those seeming to be immigrants. In Dallas there is a
large quantity of housekeepers or nannies who are Mexican, perhaps because
people find it easier to pay them off-the-books and save taxes. Many Mexican
men find jobs working for landscaping businesses or in roof construction,
however there does not seem to be so many in the actual construction of
the buildings. Again, this is only a personal observation with no statistical
information to back it up.
One way that the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) helps to
weaken the job "magnet" that draws illegals is by instituting
raids on some workplaces and then imposing fines on the employers who knowingly
hire illegal immigrants. They then "take" the employees, leaving
the business without workers and with a heavy fine to pay, even though their
jobs can be easily replaced by other immigrants. Although this may sound
like an effective solution, it produces problems for those employers who
are trying to act legally. If they unknowingly hire illegals with fake documents
they are fined by the government, but if they question workers too closely
about their work certificates they are liable to be sued for ethnic discrimination
(for more information see race issues) (Catherine
Yang, "Cheese It - The Boss! The INS Wants Employers to Catch Illegal
Workers Themselves," Business Week, November 27, 1995). What is an
honest employer to do?
Another aspect of this is the idea of "network recruitment."
This suggests that some businesses not only exclude American workers from
certain jobs because of the hiring of immigrants, but also that it builds
a dependency on other countries such as Mexico for a constant influx of
new workers (once the others have been caught by the INS).
This selection of employees has direct ties to the direction in which American
wages go. One interesting statistic is that arriving immigrants have the
greatest effects on the earning of earlier immigrants: "a 10 percent
increase in the numbers of new immigrants decreases the average wage of
foreign-born workers by between 2 and 9 percent." This also has an
effect on the wages of Americans who fill the same types of jobs as the
immigrants. When it is obvious to employers that they can pay the minimum
(or sometimes less than that) and still hire workers then that is exactly
what they will do. However, in the long run their ploy to compete with overseas
countries will not work. They cannot possibly win in a wage-cutting contest
with the Third World(F.A.I.R. http://www.fairus.org/ January 1995, sg).
Is this why there is so much interest in outsourcing?
The following is a table concerning the minimum wage figures of the past
and present: ( New York Times, April 19. Source of figures form the US Labor
Department)
In a similar effort, another INS project called Operation Jobs attempted
to replace illegal workers with legal citizens by referring the businesses
involved to social services agencies. One case included the General Aluminum
Corp., in Carrollton, Texas which makes windows and doors. The corporation
raised wages this year from $4.50 to $5.00 an hour after an INS audit found
a third of its workers to be undocumented. It has since hired 200 inner-city
youth, prisoners in rehabilitation programs, and refugees with the help
of the Dallas Police, state prison officials, and other groups (Catherine
Yang, "Cheese It - The Boss! The INS Wants Employers to Catch Illegal
Workers Themselves," Business Week, November 27, 1995).
What Can Be Done?
Looking over this essay I see that it may seem to be written in a very
anti-immigrant way, but that is not how it started out. Instead this should
be viewed as one way of looking at the situation. Immigration alone is not
the problem. The economy and unemployment rate cannot be attributed to just
one cause or theory such as that. The root of the problem lies in the growth
of the world population. Immigration to the US and its effects are only
symptoms of the disease. And what is the disease? Why the human race of
course. As people continue to populate the earth at such tremendous speed,
its effects can only be negative. Just the sheer number of humans living
on this planet need huge quantities of resources and land in order to survive.
The impact is amazing. How can one get angry about such things as the destruction
of the rainforests, pollution, animal extinction, wars, starvation, and
let alone the employment rate without recognizing that what needs to be
done is to cure the disease and not treat the symptoms of overpopulation?!
These symptoms will never be stopped unless the real problem is tackled,
or for that matter simply addressed.
But the question remains of what can be done? The answer is clear. We as
humans need to reduce the number of our species in order to provide a better
standard of living for the majority of our population and maintain the quality
of the planet we live on. Only by doing this will there be less of a reason
to do such things as clear-cut huge sections of forests for wood resources,
decrease habitats by grazing cattle and growing huge quantities of plants
for our species to subsist on, have whole countries starve to death because
there are too many people to feed, pollute the environment with the earth's
billions of human inhabitants waste, enter into wars where the root cause
is competition for living space, or even have such a high rate of homlessness
and unemployment because there are too many people and not enough jobs.
So there you have it. My interpretation of the main cause of the world's
problems. And you thought this was just an essay on immigration. As far
as solutions for this problem go, I cannot hope to offer any advice on significantly
reducing immigration or unemployment without suggesting we consider reducing
the entire human population. How on earth will we be able to do that? Well,
that is an entirely different essay.