Americans Dissatisfied with Economy Despite Biden’s Praise

Although President Joe Biden praises the economic progress under his administration, polls consistently show that Americans are dissatisfied with the current economic situation—likely because, as economist E.J. Antoni explained, “the economy has only been adding jobs that are held by foreign-born workers while native-born Americans are losing jobs.”

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for May indicates that foreign-born workers in the U.S. acquired 637,000 jobs year-over-year, whereas native-born workers lost approximately 299,000 jobs during the same period.

The BLS notes that foreign-born workers include illegal immigrants.

“It is likely that both surveys include at least some undocumented immigrants. However, neither the establishment nor the household survey is designed to identify the legal status of workers,” the BLS states, adding they have no idea how many native-born workers are illegal.

Antoni pointed out in a post on X that “native-born employment is not only millions below pre-pandemic trend, but even below pre-pandemic level, while millions more foreign workers are employed today than [February of 2020], and back to trend.”

The left has tried to portray the hiring of foreign-born workers as “propelling the economy.”

PBS News argues that illegal immigrants — who broke the law to get here and in most cases have meritless asylum claims — are somehow responsible for saving the economy.

“Thousands of employers desperately needed the new arrivals. The economy — and consumer spending — had roared back from the pandemic recession. Companies were struggling to hire enough workers to keep up with customer orders.”

However, Antoni explained that the economic drain likely offsets any production benefits.

“When they make these claims about how illegal immigration has helped the United States economy they’re always talking about things like ‘Here are all the jobs they do.’ They never talk about all the costs that illegal immigration imposes,” Antoni said.

“These people are using emergency rooms and they’re not paying their hospital bills. These people have their kids in public schools which they’re not paying taxes to fund. Illegal immigrants are imposing serious and significant costs,” he continued. “Housing is another huge one. Where are these 12+ million illegal aliens staying? They are staying in apartments, they are staying in houses, which means they are increasing demand and driving up rent prices. So you can say they’re adding production to the economy but they’re also adding significant costs.”

The jobs report also indicated a decrease of 625,000 full-time jobs compared to April, while part-time jobs increased by 286,000. Additionally, there were at least 16,000 more workers holding multiple jobs compared to the previous month.

The Biden administration has emphasized a “strong labor market,” but job gains were mainly in health care, government, and leisure and hospitality.

While the unemployment rate slightly increased to 4.0%, Antoni stated in a post on X that there are “millions of people missing from the labor market” who are not included in the official unemployment rate. Including these people, the unemployment rate jumps to anywhere between 6.5% and 8.0%, “depending on methodology.”

The BLS estimates that 5.7 million people are “not in the labor force” but “currently want a job.”

“These individuals were not counted as unemployed because they were not actively looking for work during the 4 weeks preceding the survey or were unavailable to take a job,” according to BLS.

“Before the pandemic, this number was actually trending down,” Antoni noted. “It peaked in 2018 and because the labor market was so strong in 2018/2019, that number was trending down. In other words, people who previously had left the labor force were re-entering because it was basically so easy to get jobs — good paying, blue-collar jobs — and so not only are we well above the pre-pandemic level, we are way above the pre-pandemic trend in terms of people missing from the labor force.”