The BLS released its annual report on foreign-born workers today, so let's celebrate by taking a look at the unemployment rate of native vs. foreign-born workers:
As you can see, foreign-born workers generally have a slightly lower unemployment rate than native-born workers, but during the pandemic they lost their jobs in large numbers and their unemployment rate spiked to two percentage points above native-born workers. However, they've gradually made up the difference, and by mid-2021 both native and foreign-born workers had about the same unemployment rate. In April both were at 3.3%.
So basically there is a worker shortage and anyone with a pulse can get a job.
I think the biggest factor is the long expected Baby Boomer retirement is happening which removes them from the work force but not the economy, they still buy just as many groceries and eat at restaurants and so on and if anything spend more on leisure activities.
If only there was a population of people who would be happy to move here and take service jobs...
If only. Not going to happen unless actual meaningful immigration legislation happens.
Immigration legislation????? Like, who cares. Would not help and frankly irrelevant.
Dude, the US has allowed since 1970 50-100 Thousand people here a year take legal residence a year.
There is no worker shortage, but overconsumption creating useless jobs we do not need
speaking of retirees.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/05/05/retirement-jobs-work-inflation-medicare/
There is so much diversity among the foreign-born population, ranging from Indian Doctors to Latino auto mechanics to English women who married an American guy studying in the UK, that it is hard to make any generalized judgement about that group to use in analysis.
👍👍👍
Very VERY OT**********COVID***********
https://www.startribune.com/new-covid-19-variants-of-concern-found-in-minnesota/600174375/
Minnesota has identified its first COVID-19 cases involving the BA.4 and BA.5 coronavirus subvariants that have shown the ability in other nations to spread *********even in highly immunized populations.*************
Genomic sequencing of a sampling of positive coronavirus infections found BA.4 in four cases and BA.5 in one case — with four involving residents outside the Twin Cities, according to the latest data from the Minnesota Department of Health. Identified specimens involving a BA.2.12.1 subvariant, which is causing high COVID-19 levels in the Northeast now, have increased over the past week from 47 to 131.
Whether these variants will accelerate COVID-19 cases in Minnesota is unclear. While earlier delta and omicron variants produced record infections this winter, a beta variant did not produce much viral spread locally last spring after it was identified in Brazil.
*************One reason for concern is that the two new subvariants spread rapidly in South Africa despite recent COVID-19 waves that should have left people there with short-term immunity after infection, said Dr. Gregory Poland, head of Mayo Clinic's COVID-19 vaccine research group************.
"BA.4 and BA.5 ... very efficiently escape that immunity," Poland said in a podcast released this week. "So they are having a major surge with BA.4 and BA.5 driving up cases, hospitalizations and deaths."
Pandemic activity already is increasing in Minnesota, but growth in infections continues to outpace severe illness and hospitalizations. The state on Wednesday reported another 2,120 coronavirus infections.
Nearly 1.5 million Minnesotans have tested positive for COVID-19, *******including 68,742 people who have been infected more than once.********* The total excludes positive at-home test results that aren't reported to public health authorities. Minnesota's ***********actual infection total could be above 3.3 million, including unreported and asymptomatic cases, according to federal estimates.*********
State health officials are hopeful that high immunity levels from recent vaccinations and infections are at least reducing severe COVID-19 illnesses. Hospitalizations in Minnesota of patients with COVID-19 have increased from 183 on April 10 to 440 Tuesday. However, hospitals are reporting a higher proportion of patients admitted for other purposes whose COVID-19 positive tests only turn up due to routine screening.
COVID-19 hospitalizations requiring intensive care have increased from a low of 20 on April 25 to 31 Tuesday. The latest ICU total only makes up 7% of the current COVID-19 hospitalizations, though. During earlier pandemic waves, ICU patients accounted for up to 30% of the hospitalizations.
Allina Health reported that COVID-19 positivity among symptomatic patients in the hospitals increased from about 3% in the week ending April 10 to about 16% in the week ending May 8. Among hospitalized patients with no COVID-19 symptoms, the comparable test positivity rate has increased from nearly 2% to almost 4%.
COVID-19 patients placed on ventilators because of severe lung problems declined from 48 in early February to only one earlier this month.
The state on Wednesday reported six COVID-19 deaths in seniors.
The age trend of COVID-19 mortality has shifted back toward seniors, who account for 82% of Minnesota's 12,575 deaths in the pandemic. Only 72% of deaths involved seniors since last June, when the delta variant took a larger toll among younger, unvaccinated adults. However, since March, seniors have once again made up more than 80% of Minnesota's COVID-19 deaths
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It's NOT over
2 MORE variants
Both natural and vaccine immunity are failing far too quickly against these new variants
Seniors affected more by this, so it seems at this very early stage.
Who cares.
It will never be over. Covid is here for good and appears poised to become endemic. The question is how do we live with it going forward in a way that doesn't involve simply living alone at home in a hazmat suit forever. We're all going to probably get Covid at some point. I've had it. If you're vaxxed and boosted, the chances of getting seriously ill are very, very small. We take bigger risks getting in our car and driving to work each morning, or eating that potato salad that's been out just a bit too long (around 128,000 people are hospitalized with foodborne illness each year; over 3000 die).
I am pro-immigration reform and making it easier for people already here to get whatever they need to work here legally, but I always wonder what the employment numbers would be if they included all of the undocumented workers. Where I live you can't get any construction work done without a full crew of undocumented workers arriving. I know someone who does this work and he is often the only US citizen on the job site. He jokes about it. My daughter volunteered to help workers at another local sports venue that hires lots of undocumented workers. She was helping them do things like cash checks (no bank accounts), access health services, etc. Everyone knows this, and probably once or twice a summer ICE shows up and makes a half-hearted roundup of some of them, but meanwhile the majority of workers just get on with the jobs.
It's so stupid. I bet if you added up all the salaries of the those ICE officers, the costs of arresting, transporting, housing, processing, and deporting all the people they round up, and then compared it to what it would cost to add some staff to US consulates around Mexico who could process people wanting to come north to work, give them background checks, and then seasonal work permits or whatever so they could work above-board here, the taxpayers would save millions, if not billions.
But, as we all know, government bureaucracy and spending is never wasteful to if the purpose of said profligacy and waste is to put the boot in on POC and/or the poor.
Back in 2015 as TFG and various R governors were drumming up hysteria about undocumented immigrants swarming across the US/Mexican border because we didn't have WALL! I decided to go to the CBP web site to see what they said about that.
It turned out the vast majority of undocumented immigrants were coming in through the regular points of entry. The number of people taken into custody in the wildlands was very low. And the border patrol "productivity" was pitiful. Ten border patrol agents got you one immigrant every few months. I dropped a suggest in that they should just hand badges out to anybody they found and put THEM in charge of rounding up undocumented immigrants. It would cost a LOT less and be almost equally effective.
It also wouldn't PO all the Texas farmers actually running farms and ranches on the border - unlike WALL running through their property and cutting them off from acreage near the river - there were gates for passage, but it turned out the border patrol couldn't keep them maintained reliably, which meant emergency vehicles and the people needing them could not count on reliable access. The would jam shut, or jam open. Oh well, the Mexicans showed that a portable Sawzall could clear a passage in a few minutes. Makes it really hard to get financing when a good chunk of your land has impaired access.
What hysteria??? Compared to 2007 or 2018, it wasnt even close. 2016 would hit a generational low.
Immigration was a non issue in 2016 election unlike 2008.
Moreover, if we implemented a work visa program for hemispheric laborers, we could (if designed properly) undermine the perverse incentives to immigrate illegally to the US. The main reason the US has so much undocumented immigration is there's no legal market for bringing willing buyers and sellers together. And what legal markets cannot supply, black markets will. It really is that simple.
This state of affairs is likely to continue as long as the political will to enforce the problem out of existence doesn't exist (and it never will IMHO).
It would have been much more effective if ICE rounded up all the managers and took them away in cuffs. Who hired the "illegals", anyway? If it's a crime, arrest the alleged crimer, not his victims.
The illegals are hired by "staffing companies" contracted by employers who process the workers' forged SS numbers with a wink and a nudge. The actual managers can then act all shocked that there was gambling going on in this establishment when the feds show up and pass the buck back to the staffing company, which by the time the law catches up with them has declared bankruptcy, shredded their files, and relocated four states over.
John Cleese on extremism,
https://old.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/ut4hnk/the_benefits_of_extremism_with_john_cleese_still/