Questions about foreign workers came up yesterday on Twitter. The numbers are from the BLS. 
Since the data is not seasonally adjusted, it’s important to compare numbers to the same month a year ago.
I also added pandemic lows for a point in reference. All of the other numbers shown are from February in various years.
I posted the numbers last month. This post is an update.
Thanks to ZeroHedge for being the first I am aware of for charting these numbers.
Change Since February 2020
- Employment Level: +2,298,000
- US Born Employment: -1,007,000
- Foreign Born Employment: +3,305,000
Foreign Born Definition
Those born outside the United States (or one of its outlying areas such as Puerto Rico or Guam), and neither parent was a U.S. citizen. The foreign born include legally-admitted immigrants, refugees, temporary residents such as students and temporary workers, and undocumented immigrants.
Has this Been Good for the Economy?
We need a sensible border policy and are not remotely close to one.
Nonfarm Payrolls and Employment Levels
Payrolls vs Employment Gains Since March 2022
- Nonfarm Payrolls: 6,438,000
- Employment Level: +2,797,000
- Full Time Employment: +439,000
In the last 23 months, the economy added 6.4 million jobs, but full time employment only rose by 439,000.
Jobs Up 275,000 with 52,000 More Government Jobs, Employment Down 184,000
For more discussion of the latest employment report, please see my detailed report Jobs with seven charts: Jobs Up 275,000 with 52,000 More Government Jobs, Employment Down 184,000
Huge Percentage of Job Gains are Related to Taking Care of Immigrants
2024 is starting where 2023 ended. Job growth is soaring, but employment isn’t. Second, the number of jobs needed to take care of illegal immigration is a huge percentage of the increase in jobs.
For more discussion of the above chart, please see Huge Percentage of Job Gains are Related to Taking Care of Immigrants
Revised Question Again
I have a post on demographics coming up next week.
I estimate how many additional people will retire
(more accurately – not be employed and not even looking for employment) in the next 5 years.
I also calculate the number not employed (whether looking or not)
Any guesses?
The question is Next 5 Years Only, Retirement age (60 and older)
Note: People collecting SS is not a good metric to use. Many, including me, are collecting SS but still working.
I crunched the numbers two way – very little difference between decline in participation and decline in employment
I will play this game so here are my SS predictions, each number is end of year in millions:
2024 – 72483
2025 – 73341
2026 – 74199
2027 – 75057
2028 – 75915
2029 – 76773
2030 – 77630
From the end of 2024 to end of 2030 I project at least 4.3 million new recipients based on current trends. I like to add a 33% factor to that to account for people that retire but don’t start SS right away so my guess 5.7 million retired people by end of 2030.
If we do have a recession then anyone near retirement age 55+ will likely be booted from their job with a severance package, that’s standard operating procedure in the U.S., and won’t go back to work so I’ll add another 20% factor. I will therefore calculate 6.8 million retired thru 2030.
If we end up in a depression then triple that number. note that this doesn’t account for deaths or disability, just people that retire. The total labor depletion that I expect is at least 10 million but you weren’t asking that question, just retirement.
Please See my revised Q- If you want me to delete your answer I can do that
Sure. I’ll repost my answer of 6 million.
Really retire, as in not have a job, or retire to trigger a private pension payment, then move on to the next job?
Please See my revised Q- If you want me to delete your answer I can do that
I estimate 5 million people retired in next 5 years in the new revised question.
Do you mean an additional 5 million people not working and not looking as opposed to not working? The number not working will be higher because some not working will be looking.
You wrote, “I estimate how many additional people will retire
(more accurately – not be employed and not even looking for employment) in the next 5 years.”
From that question, it sounds like you are asking how many people will quit permanently because they don’t want to work anymore at any job at any wage and are truly retired and healthy.
If that is the question, I think it’s about 5 to 6 million between today and March 9 2029 (five years). This assumes no recession or black swan events. Also note we are not counting disability as a voluntary quit.
The real question for me is how much labor will leave the labor force in 5 years regardless of reason (quits, layoffs, disability, etc). I think that number will be 10 to 12 million. This doesn’t include deaths just new non-working people (for any and all reasons).
The math is pretty easy, 150k/month new SS recipients over 5 years = 9 million people.
177,000 boomers are dying every month and growing. Over 2 million a year are removed fromm Social Security and Medicare.
“I estimate 5 million people retired in next 5 years…”
I think you meant per year, this year alone 4.4 mil turn 65.
No, I meant 5 million the way Mish worded the question. The issue is what Mish wrote way below. He is technically retired, collecting SS but still working. I assume he is referring to this blog and maybe the photo side gig and perhaps some other role but is that the same level of contribution than working at a corporate office 50 hours a week to society?
Yes, 10,000 baby boomers hit retirement age every day but how many truly fully retire where they are not working at all in any capacity over the next 5 years?
the question is complicated because if an engineer retires from designing jets but now runs a food truck because he loves to cook is that the same level of contribution to society? For me it’s not. Yes, running a food truck is ‘work’ and it feeds people but the level of output from engineer vs cook is on a hugely different scale.
When I say 5 million, I mean 5 million people with no side gigs or hobbies or anything productive. Think of these people as gardening, painting or reading books for enjoyment, not a business. These are pure non-contributors to society. The rest will work in some capacity at part-time jobs largely because they will have to work to pay for sky rocketing inflation.
The main concern I have always had is the level of productivity dropping. A 30 year experienced engineer/electrician/plumber/doctor/teacher/whatever is going to leave a huge hole in productivity even if replaced by two or three inexperienced people. Maybe AI and robots will help but I’m not holding my breath.
Warren Buffet has quipped that you can’t get nine women pregnant and make a baby in one month. The same holds true for productivity, replacing 50 million experienced people with 100 million youngsters (if they even existed) still wouldn’t offset the loss of productivity. We don’t even have the 100m youngsters so it’s a double whammy to productivity.
And in the past, it was easy to poach people from other industrialized countries but they are all hurting for people too and the cheap China labor machine is gone. All that is left are poorly educated people from countries with poor infrastructure.
Lastly, whether the number is 5 million or 10 million or 20 million or more is irrelevant because those numbers are huge and going to have a huge impact and no one is doing anything to address the issue and time has run out. States with bad immigration policies or dwindling populations now will simply get far worse. I don’t have the answer, just hoping for the best but planning for the worst. It won’t be a shock to me if there is (ironically) mass migration out of the U.S. by boomers to lower cost countries. What holds many back is the “free” medicare but once that’s insolvent they won’t have much of a choice.
“ It won’t be a shock to me if there is (ironically) mass migration out of the U.S. by boomers to lower cost countries.”
I’m gen X and considering it, my wife seasonally works out of country and I frequently travel to her, it’s mind-blowing how far money goes almost everywhere else, even Europe.
The problem, blaming the Fed without going the full distance on why the Fed has had to lower rates so much over the last 4 decades.
I sound like a broken record, but when you dish out trillions in free money to the wealthy under the guise of “job creation”, and the bulk of those jobs are created outside the country, both government and the Fed wind up offsetting the imbalance.
It doesn’t take a mathematician to see this, the Fed is the band aid for Reaganomics.
if you give a “job creating” tax cut, an actual job has to be created, INSIDE the country, otherwise you’re just transferring wealth from poor to rich and bankrupting America as government winds up spending more than it takes in to make up the difference.
All said, I agree with you about the finale, with the power lobbying and campaign funding has over D.C., we won’t stop this until America is bankrupt.
In recession immigration will stop, traveling will stop, the want of the king dollar will rise.
I agree. I recall back when I joined the workforce in the early 2000s people (mostly mgmt) talked constantly about the huge brain drain and opportunities for younger people to quickly move up the ladder due to the coming deluge of boomer retirements. That chatter lasted maybe a few years then died with the Great Recession. Well that brain drain is beginning (I’m seeing it at my place of work), and many companies haven’t thought much about what to do about it. In my view, the result will be higher labor costs for businesses which is inflationary.
A dam break starts with an initial trickle, weakening of the whole then a massive cascade failure at some point.
That’s what is going to happen to the U.S. economy and corporate America. We’ve had a trickle of boomer retirements then a massive wave will hit around 2030 and the cascade failure will start.
The deep pocket corporations will pay big bucks for talent even to bring people back from retirement if necessary to keep going. Businesses with no deep pockets will shutter or be gobbled up by bigger firms.
And expect the poor and immigrants to be blamed for it all.
Actually, I think it will be higher IT, automation and external contractor costs. That’s what my former employer started spending on, when they no longer had the in-house labor.
My dad is also still working and collecting SSI. He plans on working until he physically can’t. He loves what he does and likes to keep busy.
Are you factoring in deaths, or not?
Here is a lowball starting point from AARP:
“Every day in the U.S., 10,000 people turn 65”
and
“labor force participation rate for both men and women is expected to grow further to reach 21.7 percent by 2024.”
… so, about 15 million in the next five years, not factoring in deaths. I believe deaths should be factored in, because not factoring in expected deaths is a huge mistake people make when discussing future Social Security solvency. The Boomers are a pig in the python that will pass “quickly”, cf SSA actuarial tables for mortality.
About 2.2% of 67 yo die before reaching age 68. About 4.7% of 76 yo die before reaching age 77. Tick tock on down the exponential mortality. These percentages are yearly, but are multiplicatively cumulative each year. Over short time spans at this rate, most of the retirement pool is deceased.
In recession the death rate might rise. The healthcare sector might
be subjected to a systemic change.
PS Most “undocumented workers” pay pzyroll taxes, but are ineligible to draw benefits unless they gain citizenship. It can be seen as a “tithe” illegals pay for the privilege to work in the US as an illegal, if they return to their native country.
27,375,000 M
In the 60+ range, we’re still talking about Boomers, but the last of them. If the younger Boomers are anything like Gen X, they have an average $30K saved for retirement, so most would need to keep working, or live off their SS checks in a child’s above garage apartment.
I’m guessing an additional 8 million people not working and not looking by 2030.
American worker replacement programs.
US participation rate would jump up?
Fentanyl deaths would plummet?
Wages for most construction work would double?
Welfare roles and ER financial loses would plunge?
Minimum wage would find its level on supply/demand instead of fiat?
What?
Over the next 5 years roughly 21 million Americans turn 65. Taking a guess 14 million of those 21 million are still working so Ill take a guess 14 million retiring in the next 5 years.
ZerhoHedge’s analysis skills have gone to s**t in recent years. Mish, I hope you can do better.
The statement “US Born Employment is Down By Over 1 Million Since 2020” sound ominous but is actually meaningless without the demographic context of working-age US-Born population.
I suspect more US born people are leaving workforce than entering. With Boomers aging out, and unemployment remaining low, that seems like what’s really going on here. If so, it’s a damn good thing we have (legal) immigrants picking up the slack. I agree 100% illegal immigration needs to stop and laws should be updated to make legal immigration less of a nightmare (especially vs. illegal).
Politically, though, it’s unwise to toss out stats that hint towards blaming even legal immigrants for “taking jobs away” from natives. There’s a lot of voters who are either legal immigrants or their children.
I’d love to see a more thorough analysis of this question before it turns into a campaign debate. Because those who don’t do their homework properly get shown up as fools by their opponents who do.
Agree.
GW skirmishes near PGH started started the seven years war. It was a world war. Tariffs on sugar and tea were high, but smugglers did’t pay a dime. When the war was over France debt service was 65% of their budget, GB : 40%, The 13 colonies were in depression. Since France lost Canada, India and the sugar island the threat of a French invasion was gone. They imposed western boundaries, a wall, in the Appalachia and naval blockade to stop the “free” trade. After the war catholic foreign born immigrants from Germany & Ireland came to the colonies. They wanted to build farms west of OH in the Indian territories. GW asked and got permission to speculate in the “wild west”. The sugar tax was repelled. The tax on tea was lower, but had to be paid. The king sent 10,000 soldiers to “protect” the colonies from France. Most of them were stationed near Boston. After the Boston harbor “event” Benjamin Franklin was called Brutus,
a traitor and the leader of a secret cabal that plans to overthrow a legitimate gov.
“Money for nothin’ and your chicks for free
Now that ain’t workin’, that’s the way you do it
Lemme tell ya, them guys ain’t dumb”
My backup retirement plan: life without parole. Make sure you’re in a state without the death penalty.
Regarding illegal immigation, it’s an old debate. Is the net cost positive or negative? Are jobs created to take care of illegals a good thing or not? It’s employing people, but is it productive work? If we hire people to dig holes, and hire people to fill in the holes, is that a good thing or not?
If immigrants (with varying levels of skill and education) are a help to the country, then it should be possible to convince voters and thus their representatives to change the law to enable immigrants to come legally in whatever numbers we want them. There is no excuse for tolerating illegal immigration.
Yes, laws should be adhered to, no question. But from the economic POV, is it a positive or negative?
If they are such a value, then why aren’t they helping the country they were born in?
Because the country they are leaving provides them no opportunity for a better life. The US is the best country in the world to live in if you want to get ahead. Of course, that still means acquiring the necessary skills and education, and then working hard and smart to get there. That’s all that the great majority of people in the world want. A chance for a better life.
It’s been that way for the last few hundred years. Which is why our country has become the dominant economy in the world when compared to many others.
Undoubtedly immigration has benefitted the US over the years.
Uncontrolled immigration is another matter.
The candidates want one extreme or the other.
Not answering the question, Mish. Is illegal immigration an economic positive or negative?
US born employment is down 1M since Feb 2020. They might have had a full time
job before retirement. They are likely replaced by cheaper foreign born workers. The employment level is slightly down despite the boost from gov employees and foreign born workers. Foreign born workers can be US citizens or the illegals. But if a gen X
full time job worker was sacked his “ante” income is gone for good.
The full time jobs are down 1.8 million from 134.727M to 132.946M in 3 months, many are in the upper percentiles of wages. The downtrend might cont. The “ante” income is gone. Those are the people who purchased a house when the mortgage rate was 3%/4% and 50K/70K cars. They are worried and angry. The Biden administration fights this trend by adding gov jobs. All they need is two more quarters of fake econ and employment data. SPX might not cooperate.
NSDUH data:
Among people aged 12 or older in 2021, 61.2 million people (or 21.9 percent of the population) used illicit drugs in the past year. The most commonly used illicit drug was marijuana, which 52.5 million people used. Nearly 2 in 5 young adults 18 to 25 used illicit drugs in the past year; 1 in 3 young adults 18 to 25 used marijuana in the past year.
That is, 40% of young adults use drugs… nice future.
But weed is “medicine”! Sheese.
The weed that people smoke these days is 3-5X stronger than what we had back in the 1960/70’s and it is going to have a lot more negative impact on people..
We escaped the recession since 2009. In the next five years we might get one. A deep one, or in tranches. Unemployment rate will rise. The number of retired people will rise. Death will rise. Certain industries will be subjected to a systemic change. Extrapolation is naive.
One of the greatest con jobs in the history of America is taking place now before the election and Americans are helpless to do anything about it … this is truly a sad and moment for the country so many people have no idea what’s actually happening and how they will be affected …
At the small group of 30 at my employer, we’ve had 3 people come out of retirement due mainly to boredom and return to part time work. None of them need the money but all said they wanted to keep their brain sharp and had known multiple people who stopped working for so long and developed dementia. Mind you this is highly technical work in the semiconductor industry af the very leading edge of the industry in terms of innovation. Have to wonder how many people who’ve retired will come back for even just part time work to keep their mind occupied. Retirement isn’t easy even if you have a lot of money and ideas on how to spend time.
My mind is so occupied that I don’t have time for work!
Train is off the tracks, shux🙃
Than the lord for the immigrants. Otherwise there would be no one available (oops I mean willing) to do work that needs to be done. BTW, I agree we need to control our borders, but the immigrants are an important part of keeping this country going. Many native born are pretty lazy and feel like they are above doing hard, difficult, and not fun work. better to sit at home in mommy’s basement and play video games.
As long as their parents want to support their kids to sit in the basement and play video games, that is their choice.
But I somehow doubt that this is very accurate.
There are so many government and aid agency handouts that it isn’t hard to just “get by” doing little to no work while they try to strike it big betting on sports, buying lottery tickets and getting drunk/stoned every day.
Leaked doc displayed 320K illegals FLOWN into various US cities and given a 2-year work permit. This is in addition to the estimated 10M that have crossed the boarder illegally under Biden. If they get to CA they will have free medical coverage and social benefits. CA is also trying to pass a bill to allow loans to illegals with $0 down and 0% interest rates. Today the president said that illegals should be respected because they built this country. Unless they were in this country, helped build it, then moved away and came back, I don’t know who he’s actually referring to.
Meanwhile, my soaring costs and taxes in CA are paying for all this B.S.
Those 0% and 0 down are really targeted to illegals or immigrants who are in the processes of becoming legal? Because if i am correct it is for 1st generation home buyers? So for people who ancestors have lived in the US for 70 to 200 years and paid millions of taxes if one of those ancestors happened to own a home……no soup for you.
/sarc
Thank you for your family’s generational hard work and building this country but you’re not special like current new immigrants.
For 2024, 4.4 million Americans reach retirement age.
With 4.2 million born in 2006 reaching working age 18.
(Which was a 3% surge from 2005 births of 4.1 mil)
That’s minus -200,000 participation rate for this year alone, factoring age 65 out + age 18 in the labor pool, so it’s no surprise that we have minus – 1 mil since 2020.
To wit –
Let’s invest billions in building that wall, and while we’re at it, cut taxes for billionaires to create jobs in China, thereby suppressing middle class wage growth to stave off that pesky birth rate of ours, problem = solved.
Be warned though, we’re likely to be the one’s climbing that wall.
.
.
OT – the recession that never came..
link to wsj.com
There are a lot of angry disoriented partisans out there that were rooting for one.
Reminds me of Tackleberry from the original police academy “Sir, he’s depressed, he missed out on gunplay.”
Submitted for your consideration.
I don’t understand why more immigration is resulting in more growth. If jobs are available, people will fill them if they are paying a wage that works for them.
Were NEW jobs created for these incoming bodies? If these illegals were working MORE jobs, then the labor participation rate should have grown but yet it is basically hovering around 62.6%.
Someone please explain.
——-
The economy is roaring. Immigration is a key reason.
Momentum in the job market picked up aggressively over the past year — all while Washington is deadlocked on a border deal
Updated February 27, 2024 at 11:39 a.m. EST
Immigration has propelled the U.S. job market further than just about anyone expected, helping cement the country’s economic rebound from the pandemic as the most robust in the world.
That momentum picked up aggressively over the past year. About 50 percent of the labor market’s extraordinary recent growth came from foreign-born workers between January 2023 and January 2024, according to an Economic Policy Institute analysis of federal data. And even before that, by the middle of 2022, the foreign-born labor force had grown so fast that it closed the labor force gap created by the pandemic, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
Immigrant workers also recovered much faster than native-born workers from the pandemic’s disruptions, and many saw some of the largest wage gains in industries eager to hire. Economists and labor experts say the surge in employment was ultimately key to solving unprecedented gaps in the economy that threatened the country’s ability to recover from prolonged shutdowns.
“Immigration has not slowed. It has just been absolutely astronomical,” said Pia Orrenius, vice president and senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “And that’s been instrumental. You can’t grow like this with just the native workforce. It’s not possible.”
…
link to washingtonpost.com
“If jobs are available, people will fill them if they are paying a wage that works for them.”
There are many reasons but one of the key one is the mismatch in where people want to live and work and where the jobs are located. As an example, you couldn’t pay me enough to move to a place like Alabama or Mississippi but some immigrant from India or Argentina would probably do it.
Most of the jobs are in large cities and that’s where most immigrants go too, the legal ones are often bound to the corporations via H1B rules and the illegal ones simply get paid under the table. 80% of most states GDP come from the large city centers in that state. If people don’t want to go to the city they lose out on the opportunities.
“Were NEW jobs created for these incoming bodies?”
Part of the reason the Fed started hiking in ’22 was Job openings (JOLTs) was above 11 million.
Boomers are retiring faster than birth rate, Jolts is still relatively high.
.
Boomers are retiring faster than monthly job creation rate, according to AARP (~238K retirements/month).
But even if so, the jobs Boomers hold aren’t the same jobs that illegal immigrants are qualified to do.
Then the employers will keep raising wages until they discover the number that will cause people to accept the jobs.
One of the problems is that too many people find it easy to get by with minimal work or under the table work because of all the government support programs and proliferation of food handouts from churches and such.
Many of those that stopped working are wealthy enough not to. It isn’t because there aren’t jobs available. Covid changed many perspectives of American born people and made some realize that work is overrated in the grand scheme of things. Literally no one looks back on their life and says “I wish I had kept working or worked longer.”
Right on….
link to wsj.com
“By outward appearances, the labor market today looks much as it did before the pandemic. The unemployment rate is just as low, the share of adults in the labor force is just as high, and wages are growing at roughly the same pace after inflation.
But beneath the surface, the nature of labor has changed profoundly. Career and work aren’t nearly as central to the lives of Americans. They want more time for their families and themselves, and more flexibility about when, where and how they work.
The impact of this change can already be seen in both individual companies and the broader economy. It has led to a persistent shortage of workers, especially in jobs that seem less desirable because, for example, they require in-person work or fixed hours. That, in turn, has altered the bargaining position of employers and employees—forcing employers to adapt, not just by paying more but giving priority to quality of life in job offers.”
Mish, excellent analysis and valuable information. Let’s remember though many more than 1 million people have retired since 2020. Only that small dip in total full-time jobs means millions were actually created, no? This doesn’t change the poignancy of the trends you pointed out. Thanks once again!
I don’t know what is so difficult about factoring in people that retire here on this site. At the very least we have social security enrollments.
From the social security snapshot link
Jan 2020 – 69,178 total SS recipients
Jan 2024 – 71,725 total SS recipients
2.547m new social security recipients. Does NOT include people that retired but not claiming SS nor does it include people that have died because dead people don’t collect SS.
It’s easy to estimate 5 million+ no longer in the job market from retirements and deaths or illnesses (disability).
I track the numbers monthly for investing purposes and there are, on average, 150k new SS recipients being added every month or close to 2m people. Gen X is right behind the boomers.
Source
link to ssa.gov
People collecting SS is not a good metric to use. Many, including me, are collecting SS but still working.