Of course Fox has found a way to turn how well the economy is doing and the March jobs report into an excuse to once again fearmonger that all of the dirty criminal brown people crossing the border are coming here to steal the "real 'Murkins" jobs.
April 8, 2024

Of course Fox has found a way to turn how well the economy is doing and the March jobs report into an excuse to once again fearmonger that all of the dirty criminal brown people crossing the border are coming here to steal the "real 'Murkins" jobs.

Never mind that migrants are the ones helping to boost the US jobs market without affecting inflation, and that the jobs most of these people are doing are jobs that most native-born workers don't want. They're still going to find a reason to throw cold water on any good news for Biden over on Fox.

As CNBC reported, immigration is a net benefit to the economy, and their reporting also dispelled the notion that immigrants are supposedly taking American jobs:

‘No evidence’ immigrants are taking American jobs

The extent to which immigration may be keeping U.S.-born men without college degrees on the sidelines is unclear, Malde said. There are other reasons why their labor force participation may have declined long-term, he said: automation and technology reducing the demand for low-skilled labor; economic shifts away from manufacturing and toward service-oriented jobs, which often require higher educational attainment; and changing social norms.

The prime-age labor force participation rate of U.S.-born men without a college degree “grew at a record pace in each of the last two years and is above its pre-COVID trend,” according to the Economic Policy Institute, or EPI, a left-leaning think tank.

In other words, the economy is both absorbing immigrants and generating job opportunities for U.S.-born workers, the institute said. The idea that immigrants are “taking all our jobs” is “deeply misguided,” EPI researchers wrote in a recent analysis.

laborparticipation

The U.S. unemployment rate has been below 4% for two years, hovering near record lows. It was an average 3.6% for U.S.-born workers in 2023, the lowest rate on record, EPI said.

“The labor market is tight as a drum,” especially for the types of lower-paid jobs many immigrants take, Zandi said.

“There’s just no evidence at this point in time that immigrants are taking American jobs,” Zandi added. “They’re jobs that are simply going unfilled.”

Kevin Drum reached the same conclusion in his recent post here.

None of these facts will stop Fox from continually airing segments like this one with Maria Bartiromo and Ohio GOP Sen. JD Vance, where they were also repeating the "migrant crime" lie that Chris Hayes debunked last month.

Here's the exchange with Bartiromo and Vance from this weekend's Sunday Morning Futures.

BARTIROMO: And while the administration was celebrating what appeared to be a blockbuster jobs report on Friday, showing 303 ,000 jobs created in the month of March and the unemployment rate down to 3 .8 percent. The bad news in this report is that most of the jobs over the last year have gone to illegal or foreign-born workers.

Here's former Council of Economic Advisors head Kevin Hassett with me this weekend on Fox Business. Watch.

HASSETT: Over the last year, that table reports that there were 615,000 jobs created only. And of those 615 ,000, 1.3 million were people who almost surely are illegal aliens. They're aliens, for sure, and in fact, people who are U .S. residents a year ago, about 650,000 of them have lost their jobs this year. And so what's going on is that there's an employment boom that's coming from these people who are streaming across the border.

BARTIROMO: Wow. Joining me right now in this Sunday Morning Futures exclusive is Ohio Senator JD Vance. Senator, it's great to see you this morning. Thanks very much for being here. Your reaction to the jobs report on Friday?

VANCE: Well, I think, unfortunately, Kevin Hassett is exactly right. If you look not just over the last year, Maria, but over the last three or four years, much of the job growth from the Biden administration has gone to the foreign-born, many of those, of course, are illegal aliens.

If you contrast that with the Trump economy, Maria, which was about productivity enhancements, higher wages for American workers, more manufacturing, and ultimately better, good-paying jobs for American workers, with the Biden economy, where so much of the economic growth has gone to the foreign-born, has gone to illegal immigrants, while American workers struggle to feed their families and struggle to buy homes, struggle to actually live the American dream. It's a really, really sad state of affairs.

And while President Biden wants to flag-wave about how well the economy is doing, I've been home for the last two weeks, Maria. People just don't buy it. People recognize that it's getting harder to live your dreams under the Biden economy, and it's unfortunately because a lot of that net job growth, has gone to the foreign-born.

What a disgraceful commentary for the President to be bragging about an economy that's benefiting illegal immigrants more than American citizens.

BARTIROMO: That is just astounding, Senator. And all day Friday, we heard all this celebrating about this jobs number. You've been home for two weeks talking with constituents. Tell me what's most important to the people you've spoken with in Ohio.

VANCE: The two things I hear most about is that it's still really, really hard to afford a good life in this country, Maria, from car payments, home payments. A lot of the major indexes of inflation under-count the ways in which people are struggling day to day. Larry Summers, the Obama administration economist has talked a lot about this, but if you actually look at what most people are spending their wages on, prices are not coming down. Inflation is still a very serious problem for American workers.

On the other hand, of course, you have a crime, public safety, and a legal immigration problem that's making people feel less safe in their own communities. So on the one hand, they can't afford to get by in this economy, and with this administration, on the other hand, they don't feel safe in their own communities.

We just had 15 miles from where I grew up, Maria, here in southwestern Ohio, we had a legal immigrant who was arrested, who murdered somebody in Hamilton, Ohio. So when people say Hamilton, Ohio has about 60,000 people, by the way, when people say that Ohio is not a border state, we're certainly dealing with the problems caused by Joe Biden's open border. This has got to stop. And unless you stop, I don't think you're going to give people any sense of real safety in their communities.

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