Employment Grew More Under Biden And Immigrants Did Not Get Most Jobs

Government data show employment grew more while Joe Biden was president than under Donald Trump, and that most employment went to U.S.-born workers. The topic roared into the news when Trump asserted in his convention speech that more than 100% of new jobs during the Biden presidency were “taken by illegal aliens.” The data do not support Trump’s contention, instead showing that 59% of employment growth under Biden was for U.S.-born workers. As for employment growth for foreign-born workers during the Biden administration, government statistics do not measure how many lacked legal status.

The Numbers Show Greater Employment Growth Under Biden

Employment growth numbers show more significant growth under Biden, particularly if one uses all four years of Trump’s presidency, which include the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic. Employment declined by 2.1 million—1.7 million fewer U.S.-born workers and 409,731 fewer foreign-born workers—between January 2017 and January 2021 while Donald Trump was president, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey. While Joe Biden has been president (from January 2021 to June 2024), employment grew by 13.4 million—7.9 million for U.S.-born workers and 5.5 million for foreign-born workers.

“If you look at Trump’s full presidency, the numbers look very bad for him—a loss of 2.1 million jobs versus a gain of 13.4 million under Biden,” said Mark Regets, a labor economist and a senior fellow at the National Foundation for American Policy.

To consider the Covid-19 pandemic’s economic impact, NFAP compared data for the first three years of each president. The statistics still show much greater employment growth while Biden was president, but the data are closer.

During the first three years of Trump’s presidency (January 2017 to January 2020), employment grew by 6.5 million, compared to 11.3 million during the first three years of Biden’s presidency (January 2021 to January 2024).

This calculation is still a little unfair to Trump, as some of the employment growth under Biden reflected the Covid recovery, notes Regets. Still, that post-Covid economic resurgence likely contributed to Biden’s political problems on the border.

The strong post-Covid recovery, along with political and economic crises in the region, spurred a significant increase in migrants from Latin America. Brown University economist Dany Bahar looked at 25 years of data and found a strong connection between border crossings and “job openings per unemployed person.” He concluded there was no statistical difference in border crossings relative to the tightness of the U.S. labor market regardless of who was the U.S. president. He found the same connection in the Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations. That echoed an NFAP analysis that found the lack of legal pathways has contributed to illegal immigration.

Immigration data do not support Donald Trump’s assertion that he left the “most secure” border in history. In January 2021, Trump’s last month in office, there were 75,316 Border Patrol encounters along the Southwest border, a pace exceeding 900,000 a year, a conservative estimate since January is a slower month at the border. By comparison, in FY 2016, Barack Obama’s last full year in office, there were 408,870 Border Patrol apprehensions on the Southwest border. (The Border Patrol reported encounters in place of apprehensions beginning in March 2020.)

Economists And Trump’s Convention Speech

On July 18, 2024, Donald Trump devoted a significant amount of time in his Republican National Convention speech to illegal immigration. One economic claim in the speech received the most attention.

“Today, our cities are flooded with illegal aliens,” said Trump. “Americans are being squeezed out of the labor force and their jobs are taken. By the way, you know who’s taking the jobs, the jobs that are created? One hundred and seven [107%] percent of those jobs are taken by illegal aliens.”

Some commentators puzzled over the math, asking how any group could take 107% of jobs. Trump did not cite a source. No government employment data has been published on the number or percentage of recent jobs filled by undocumented immigrants. The Department of Labor does not produce a monthly or annual figure or report that allocates employment shares based on an immigrant’s legal status, leading analysts to believe the figure in the speech was invented.

The data show that 59% of employment growth while Joe Biden has served as president was for U.S.-born workers (7,852,590 of 13,390,589 through June 2024).

Approximately one million people immigrate legally to the United States each year, and tens of thousands enter the country to work on lawful temporary visas. That means even among the foreign-born who experienced employment growth while Biden was president, economists would not expect to find a large proportion who lacked legal status.

The growth of the U.S.-born working-age population has slowed down. That helps explain why the proportion of the workforce that is foreign-born has increased and become a significant part of employment growth in the United States.

Economic studies dispute Donald Trump’s claim that the foreign-born “take” jobs from U.S.-born workers. “Immigration, thanks to native-immigrant complementarity and college skill content of immigrants, had a positive and significant effect between +1.7% to +2.6% on wages of less educated native workers, over the period 2000-2019 and no significant wage effect on college educated natives,” according to research by Giovanni Peri and Alessandro Caiumi, economists at the University of California, Davis. “We also calculate a positive employment rate effect for most native [U.S.-born] workers.” The National Bureau of Economic Research published the research.

Immigrants spend money as consumers, start businesses and help U.S.-born companies expand by providing an available source of labor. In other words, immigrants increase the demand for labor, creating more jobs in the economy.

Government data show that employment has grown over the past four years. Both U.S.-born and foreign-born workers have benefited.