The Heritage Foundation economist EJ Antoni recently stated that most of the job growth under the Biden-Harris administration has been attributed to foreign-born workers, including illegal aliens. His claims were made during an interview with Breitbart News Saturday host Matthew Boyle as the unemployment rate rose to 4.3 percent and employers added 114,000 workers to their payrolls in July – a significant miss from economists’ 180,000 expected jobs estimate.
Antoni has compiled data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) about the poor state of the economy under the Biden-Harris administration, revealing that most of the recent job growth has gone to foreign-born workers. He explained that since the beginning of the administration, native-born Americans have lost 1.2 million jobs while 1.3 million jobs were gained by foreign-born workers, including illegal aliens. In fact, there are fewer native-born Americans working now than before five years ago, before the pandemic started.
According to Antoni, this situation essentially means that job growth is being directed towards foreign-born workers, leaving millions of native-born Americans behind. The employment of native-born Americans is not only millions below its pre-pandemic trend but is also 208k below its pre-pandemic level while foreign-born employment has risen 3.9 million over the last five years and is back on track with its pre-pandemic trend.
The economist added that much of the “net job gains” over the past year have been part-time employment, with the dramatic shift from full-time to part-time jobs noticeably dragging down the average workweek. Furthermore, he stated that more than half of the jobs added within the last year were either government jobs or paid for by taxpayer dollars.
Antoni also noted that the unemployment rate is “artificially low,” as there are millions of workers who are no longer included in the unemployment tallies because they have not been looking for work since the coronavirus pandemic began. If these workers were taken into account, the actual unemployment rate would be somewhere between 6.9 and 8.2 percent, which would put it well into recession territory.