● Lazy Bastards Surround Us!
The first number sounded horrible: 23.2% of adults between the ages of 25-54 are not working. That’s 28.9 million people!! This naturally brought calls of laziness and predictions that American competitiveness has come grinding to a halt. As you might expect, this is garbage.
For starters, only 6.1% of the public is unemployed. That works out to about 9.5 million people. But they aren’t all unemployed because they are lazy. Some genuinely can’t find work. Some are between jobs. Some are going back to school. Indeed, only 775,000 are classified as “discouraged” and another 2.1 million are considered “marginally attached to the labor market.” That works out to 2.8 million you could call lazy or defective in some way, which is only 0.9% of the population.
So who are the other 6.3 million unemployed? Well, they are a combination of people who just lost or quit their jobs or are new to the work force (e.g. recent graduates). They are around 4% of the population and those people being unemployed is considered natural for an economy as typical of labor market shuffling.
So who are the rest of these 28.9 million people? Well, another large group are stay-at-home mothers. According to Pew, 29% of mothers are stay-at-home mothers. That works out to around 24 million mothers. Add those people to the unemployed and you’ve got more people than the “28.9 adults” figure meant to scare you. Then you can add people who have returned to college and those who are wealthy already.
Obviously, these numbers are all rough estimates, but the point should be clear. When you realize that 6.3 million unemployed is considered a natural number for any strong economy, and when you factor in stay-at-home mothers, suddenly this claim about adults not working falls on its face. The real problem is the 2.1 million who are “marginally attached” to the labor market and the 775,000 who are “discouraged.” Those people need to change. Other problems include stagnant or falling wages, economic insecurity, and a lack of a career path. Those are legitimate criticisms. Pointing to some imagined 28.9 million adults who aren’t working and labeling them as slackers doesn’t help.
● Dirty Immigrants Are Everywhere!
The other shock number warned us that the immigrant population had reached “the highest point in 93 years” and that “41 million” people living in the US were born overseas! We have been invaded!
Oy.
Let’s blow a hole in this one right away: 41 million people is only 13% of the population. That’s hardly earth shattering. In fact, that’s rather near our historical average, so again, there is no reason to panic.
And while many used this as an opportunity to continue their anti-Mexican rhetoric, the truth is that the Mexican population in the US fell 1% since 2010 and Mexican immigration continues at net zero or below. Indeed, of the 1.4 million new foreign-born persons who moved to the US since 2010, most came from South Asia (373,000), India (250,000), China (217,000), and the Dominican Republic (112,000).
So not only are we not awash in immigrants, but they aren’t even Mexicans. And screaming “41 MILLION PEOPLE!” and “MOST IN 93 YEARS!” doesn’t change the fact it’s only one in ten people... which hardly warrants a panic.
Highest in 93 years? Then that means it was this high before, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteThe point is not that we are awash in immigrants. We are about a 93% immigrant population anyway. With the exception of the Native Americans, we are ALL immigrants. The entire history of the U.S. has been to welcome immigrants. The point is how many of these "immigrants"are illegal and "undocumented" therefore NOT counted...because we are not allowed to count them. And no on has said they are ALL Mexican. They are from all over the world. As a matter of fact many Asians have been reported to have crossed the
ReplyDelete...border.
ReplyDeleteBev,
ReplyDeleteAsians do sometimes cross the Rio Grande, but most are visa overstayers not people who entered without inspection.
Its also worth noting that there has always been a vigorous debate on the merits of immigration.
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http://www.npr.org/2012/06/19/155380949/study-more-asians-than-hispanics-entering-u-s
SIEGEL: Let's start, first, with the big change that you are reporting here. It's not so much that Asian immigration has suddenly shot up, but it's that Latino immigration has gone down. What are the actual numbers?
TAYLOR: Well, it's a little bit of both. But there's no question it's the decline of the Latinos that has driven this crossover. And that is the result of a very sour economy in this country. Jobs have been the - tend to be the magnet for immigrants from all places in the world - increased border enforcement, increased deportation policies, etc.
Nonetheless, Asian immigration has continued to go up. It's over 400,000 a year. It's now 36, 37 percent of all new immigrants are Asian, whereas about 31 percent are Hispanic, and smaller percentages are white and black. So it's been an important crossover that has sort of occurred under the radar screen. So much of our public debate over immigration has focused on illegal immigration, which is mostly associated with Hispanics.
SIEGEL: And Asian immigration is not so illegal? It's overwhelmingly legal - or no?
TAYLOR: Of the illegal immigrants in this country, we estimate 10 or 11 percent are Asian. Of Asian immigrants, perhaps 13, 15 percent are here illegally. Most of them are here as visa over-stayers rather than illegal border crossers.
SIEGEL: When you say Asian, what nationalities are you talking about?
TAYLOR: We're talking about more than 20 nationalities. We're talking about South Asia, the Far East. But the six biggest countries of origin are Japan, China, Korea, India, the Philippines and Vietnam. If you add those together, it's about 83, 85 percent of the Asian population here.
http://abcnews.go.com/ABC_Univision/fear-immigrants-america/story?id=19177944
Franklin was deeply worried that immigrants of German ancestry would overwhelm America and change its most basic virtues, possibly bringing an end to the fledgling republic. Many of his arguments regarding this community directly mirror those used in today's immigration debate against Latinos.
"Few of their children in the country learn English... The signs in our streets have inscriptions in both languages ... Unless the stream of their importation could be turned they will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages we have will not be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious," Franklin wrote in 1753.
He said in the same letter that he wasn't opposed to the immigration of a small number of Germans because they "have their virtues." Nonetheless, he fretted that the ones who had arrived here were "generally of the most ignorant stupid sort of their own nation," and would therefore bring the country down as a whole if they continued to immigrate.
Yes, Anthony, and John Adams was worried about French immigrants - hence the "Alien and Sedition Act" which is a big stain on his legacy. However that still does not discount the fact that hundreds of thousands are crossing our Southern borders unchecked and undocumented. Just go to any Southern border town and you will see the effects.
ReplyDeleteAnd frankly there is absolutely nothing wrong with NOT wanting undocumented/illegal aliens crossing and being unaccounted for. These people are taken advantage of because no one even knows who they are...the sex slave trade being a big problem...followed by hazardous working conditions in factories, construction etc because they are expendable and no one even knows they are there. And might I add the large market for illegally obtained "documentation"...
Kit, Yes it does. In fact, it means it was this high during the roaring '20s. And if you go back further, it was even higher.
ReplyDeleteBev, The 41 million number includes illegals, who are about 11.5 million at the moment.
ReplyDeleteAnd my point is actually this... we SHOULD be having a debate about illegal immigration. We should be discussing border security (all borders). We should require our government to know who has a right to be here and to keep out and toss out those who don't. We should be debating who to let in -- those with skills? the unskilled? criminals? families? rich v. poor? etc. We should be debating how to integrate them into the culture and the country, etc....
... but we can't have that debate because we can't get past the scaremongering. So long as right-wing radio uses numbers like this to promote fear or a race war, no one will take anything else we say seriously. That gives the left a free pass to (1) call us racist every time we try to discuss these issues and (2) avoid discussing the issue at all.
And this number, like the others before it, again offered a prime example of scaremongering. I heard three different talkers treat this figure as an "I told you so" number, with them screaming about us being overrun by 41 million foreigners. Not one of the people I heard discuss this mentioned that this is only 13% of the population. Nor did they point out that 30 of the 41 million are here legally, many from "white" countries like Germany and Ireland. Instead, they used this for the same old scaremongering tactics of telling their audience that they were about to vanish in a wave of Mexicans.
That doesn't help us. It only helps the left avoid facing the need to change because they can keep the attention on our side as we scare away all but the most angry.
Anthony, Asians are the next big wave. Mexico is out of people to send, hence the net zero immigration. Asia, on the other hand, is not. In fact, I am worried that China will begin to see us as the perfect dumping ground for malcontents and will start to encourage them to come here.
ReplyDeleteAlso, as Asia becomes more prosperous, but not more free, I think their middle class will increasingly look to come here to get the full package.
Bev, There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to make sure that everyone here is legal and accounted for. The problem is that we'll never get to that phase if we don't suck the emotion out of the debate.
ReplyDeleteSo long as our side can be dismissed as racist, the left can sit on their hands and do nothing. The moment we get rational, the public will join us and then the left will need to agree to reforms. But that won't happen so long as the talkers on our side sound like their goal is to send home all the foreigners.
75% of that Dominican number are baseball players, so don’t worry, folks, they’re only here from February-September or October before going home for winter ball. More importantly, with several ballparks seeing consistently high attendance figures, these immigrants help contribute to our economy.
ReplyDeleteSo, I, for one, welcome our temporary Dominican invaders, just not those dirty steroid-using punks who more often than not lately seem to come from the DR.
Eric, I had that same thought and I had to laugh. Seriously, the Dominican Republic? How did they make the list except through baseball?!
ReplyDeleteI am tired of talking about illegal immigration. I know it is important, I just don't care about it today.
ReplyDeleteI was more interested in the unemployment numbers. You definitely understand economics better than I but the 20% unemployment or underemployment in the younger group fits more with what I am seeing and I the attached slides. Many young people are coming out of college and cannot get a job in their area of study. The dang babyboomers won't retire as expected because they are worried that their retirement won't hold them (ignoring the fact that the reason it won't is primary due to crap they asked the government to do). This is causing a log jam behind them of people trying to move up or just get started. The 6.1% unemployment rate as you know is a false and manipulated number. The current labor force is at a 15 year low at 62.8% instead of historical 66%.
http://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cps_charts.pdf
I don't think these people are lazy. I think poor economic policy by president Obama-the-Clown is hurting this group.
The charts attached I should point out shows unemployment at 20% in 16-19. 20 years and older is at 5% but I would be interested in the rate of 16-25 y/o.
ReplyDeleteThe dang babyboomers won't retire as expected
ReplyDeleteHEY, GET OFF MY LAWN! Why do we have to retire? Retirement kills people. Admittedly, I am at the youngest end of the Baby Boomer age group, what jobs are we taking that young college grads with degrees in "Women's Studies" and "15th Century Italian Poetry" can and want to fill?
"... but we can't have that debate because we can't get past the scaremongering"
ReplyDeleteActually what we can't get past is it's an election year and we do not have an Administration or either side of Congress who wants to actually debate the issue. All they want to do is blame each other for NOT debating the issue. All Obama can do is threaten that after the election he will just bypass Congress and issue another "Executive Order" and/or mass Presidential Pardon and then watch what happens! Fun times will be had by all.
Koshcat, Those are indeed problems. The unemployment number is highly focused these days. If you are a white, educated Boomer, then your unemployment rate is about 0%. If you are a teen or uneducated or a minority, then your unemployment rate could be 20% - 40%. As with so many other things, that's bad for society because it means the very people who need to be exercising their work ethic don't have jobs.
ReplyDeleteAs for Boomer retirements, without blaming it on Boomers, it is true that people are no longer retiring and that has crushed the "career path" that everyone relied on in the past. These days, the odds are against you rising to the top without job hopping and taking lots of chances.
As for who is to blame for these problems, the ultimate culprit is technology, which replaces tens of thousands of people each year. But making that worse are the moronic policy of our Clown-in Chief who has gone out of his way to make workers more expensive, work less attractive, and risk-taking/business starting less attractive.
Bev, Unfortunately, our system encourages politicians to avoid difficult issues rather than solve them. Moreover, it offers tons of short-term rewards for those willing to cause as many problems as they can.
ReplyDeleteThe solution to that is that the leaders of each party must be genuine statesmen, but those are in very short supply these days.
And Bev, the fringe problem is the same for the left. Once they launch into their pet peeves on each issue, the public tunes out and the right attacks. Basically, the debate in our country today is being led by the very people who are too stupid, too paranoid, and too cynical to be trusted with leading a debate. Oy.
ReplyDeleteBut Andrew, how do we take back the middle? How do we get back to leading from the middle? Frankly until Obama is no longer President and we have someone...ANYONE... who knows how to not pit the fringes against each other and can focus on statesmanship, we have what we have.
ReplyDeleteMany of these stay at home moms are there as a result of them being laid off somewhere and frankly, daycare is expensive, sometimes it's just easier to bide their time at home until the economy improves. However, (I know this is anecdotal), but I've two employers call me this week needing minimally experienced carpenters/maintenance workers,,and I can't find them. She's paying $12.00/hr and providing tools. I must have called 15 people and got no takers..they wanted more money. I'm confused, $12/hr is a lot more than the $280/wk maximum you can draw on unemployment in my state. There is a certain amount of laziness out there.
ReplyDeleteCritch, I don't deny that there is definitely a segment that is just lazy. But again, it's much smaller than these "shock" numbers would indicate.
ReplyDeleteAs an aside, I intersect the mommy track in Colorado all day now because I take the girls to school and pick them up. For most of the women I run into, it seems to be a choice on how to raise the kids and manage their homes. Here at least, most are married to military officers, highly conservative, and very religious. A few will add a part-time job that they can do while the kids are at school, but most see their jobs as managing the house.
That said, I am aware that in the lower-class part of town, it's often an economic choice because they get more money being single, unemployed mothers than they would if they tried to work. That's a flaw in the system that should be fixed.
In terms of filling jobs, I understand that it is getting harder to fill jobs here again.
Bev, In all honesty, I don't know. I felt that Romney could have (would have) done it. I know Obama can't. Ultimately, it will take some politicians who care more about this country than the scoring points.
ReplyDelete