For every single job added since January 2000, the United States has added approximately two new immigrants (both legal and illegal), according to a report from the Center for Immigration Studies. The report analyzed government data compiled in December 2014, which revealed the full impact of immigration on the American labor market.
“It is a mistake to think every job taken by an immigrant is a job lost by a native, but it is equally wrong to think that adding this huge number of immigrants has no implications for American workers,” said Steven Camarota, the center’s director of research, in a statement. “If immigration is the great job creator for natives that advocates argue, [then] the record number of new arrivals in the last 14 years should have created a jobs bonanza for natives. Instead, job growth did not come close to matching new immigration and natural population increase.”
Since 2000, the immigrant population grow by a net 12 million people, with 18 million total immigrants having arrived, while the U.S. economy added just 9.3 million jobs. The share of working-age immigrants with jobs or looking for jobs has held more or less constant since 2000, the report noted, while it has dropped noticeably among native Americans.