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‘Two years of lost immigration’ is responsible for half of missing workforce

washingtonpost.com

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Re: ‘Two years of lost immigration’ is responsible for half of missing workforce

#111

Post by joenot443 »

richardw wrote: post #80
honestduane wrote: post #24

The sad fact is that we have enough software developers in America to fully meet all of every American companies technical needs; The problem is that these companies don't want to meet the market demands of that labor pool by paying what that market is asking to keep that sustainable, so they want to import people who they can abuse to temporarily lower labor prices for them. And the number of Americans I know who wo…

You don’t become more competitive by creating limits. China limits what people can read, say or do. US limits movement. It became great through free movement of people and reinvention of society, and creating any limits means you skew the outcome. You limit supply, so prices rise artificially. Unless you’re Native American, your forefathers and mothers moved to the US at a time where it was easier to do so. That’s a…

When my ancestors came to Canada, they settled their own land, lost half the family in the winters, and many of them still ended up trying to return to Ireland. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how that's an "easier" experience than the route taken by folks today. There's tens of thousands of acres unsettled land left in Canada, but for whatever reason the vast majority of our new Canadians end up in the GTA.

The process of immigrating to North America today is so entirely different from how it was the 1800s it's a bit disingenuous to equate the two.

Re: ‘Two years of lost immigration’ is responsible for half of missing workforce

#112

Post by bryanlarsen »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #6

Is it a welcome slowdown to improve worker bargaining power and wages? It is hurting corporate profits though…

Only superficially does it increase wages.

Studies show that immigration counter-intuitively improves the wages of the lower class, mainly through 2 effects:

1. Immigrants spend money. "A rising tide floats all boats". 2. Immigrants take the entry level positions. So in a country without immigrants a high school dropout might become a janitor. But with immigrants the immigrant becomes the janitor and the high school dropout now has differentiable skills -- aka a solid grasp of English. So they get a position as a manager or customer facing position or something.

Put a different way, with immigration the wages of janitors goes down, but native born citizens are more likely to have better jobs than janitor.

Re: ‘Two years of lost immigration’ is responsible for half of missing workforce

#113

Post by darth_avocado »

cat_plus_plus wrote: post #87
darth_avocado wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

H1B is an easy scapegoat. You see people of certain nationalities on visa and think ohh the companies are bringing in cheap labor. The reality is that most of them would be citizens if the immigration laws were created equal. You wouldn’t see that many people on visa if they didn’t have to stay on it for decades. People come from Europe all the time and become citizens, and you don’t say “ohh look at all these foreig…

You guys have no clue about US immigration system. There are equal green card quotas for each country, which is the main merit path to citizenship. Of course some countries have a huge population or huge demand for US visas, but that still means that green cards for that country are equal in number to green cards from other countries. And for example, there are a lot of countries in Africa. On the other hand, childre…

It is really very easy.

1. If you want equality then apply it to H1B itself. Why is it that you want equality when it comes to green cards that give people equal rights, but not when you want to bring them in to do work? Apply country caps for H1B visa and let’s see how that works. Equality for employment green cards but not for visas is not a system of equality.

2. Apply equality everywhere else as well, family immigration especially.

3. You could design a system that is more equal if you really wanted. You are quick to blame huge populations, but also ignore the fact that countries like India and China are almost as big as Europe. Take into account the size as well if you wanted equal representation.

Defining fair is not easy, but you can at least try.

Re: ‘Two years of lost immigration’ is responsible for half of missing workforce

#114

Post by mixmastamyk »

Blackthorn wrote: post #54
mixmastamyk wrote: post #28

Another "shortage of workers" article aimed at the plutocracy that should be retitled "shortage of pay" to attract them. "We've tried everything, including raising pay $3 an hour!" => after a wave of significant inflation. Really? I understand many service workers are undocumented, but where are the I-9 forms going? Every job I've had made me fill one out, by law. Here we have a number of organizations outing themsel…

> I understand many service workers are undocumented, but where are the I-9 forms going? Every job I've had made me fill one out, by law. You can just be dishonest on an I9 form. It's a piece of paper, not a mindreading lie detector.

Yes you can lie on any form. Eventually it catches up with you, especially when your organization is featured in the newspaper.

The article doesn’t expand just takes widespread fraud as a fact of life.

Re: ‘Two years of lost immigration’ is responsible for half of missing workforce

#115

Post by tcbawo »

rhaway84773 wrote: post #11
mensetmanusman wrote: post #6

Is it a welcome slowdown to improve worker bargaining power and wages? It is hurting corporate profits though…

Is it though? The evidence suggests (caveat below) that most salary increases have been eaten up in inflation. In the meanwhile businesses are suffering and customers are getting poorer service. Caveat: The actual numbers show that salary increases at the bottom have been slightly higher than inflation. However, food, energy and housing inflation have all been higher than overall inflation, which are items people at…

A lot of people who thought they were above certain kinds of work are finding that they are not. This is creating a lot of socioeconomic tension. On the flip side, it is probably making people better appreciate those willing to do hard, unglamorous jobs.

Re: ‘Two years of lost immigration’ is responsible for half of missing workforce

#116

Post by pseudo0 »

ahzhou wrote: post #88
darth_avocado wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

H1B is an easy scapegoat. You see people of certain nationalities on visa and think ohh the companies are bringing in cheap labor. The reality is that most of them would be citizens if the immigration laws were created equal. You wouldn’t see that many people on visa if they didn’t have to stay on it for decades. People come from Europe all the time and become citizens, and you don’t say “ohh look at all these foreig…

+1B. Unfortunately no one cares about legal immigration in the US so all this talent is sitting around for decades and wondering why years or decades assimilation isn’t enough to walk through the front door. One of the major competitive advantages of the US is that it brain drains the rest of the world through its education system and career opportunities, but that’s starting to dwindle after a decade of neglect. US’…

Canada has one of the worst housing markets in the world, mediocre pay for software engineers, and a slowly collapsing public healthcare system (and private healthcare is illegal). Many of those issues are exacerbated by Canada's ridiculously high per capita immigration rate. The US has its own dysfunctions, but Canada does not look like a model to emulate.

Re: ‘Two years of lost immigration’ is responsible for half of missing workforce

#117

Post by richardw »

joenot443 wrote: post #111
richardw wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t become more competitive by creating limits. China limits what people can read, say or do. US limits movement. It became great through free movement of people and reinvention of society, and creating any limits means you skew the outcome. You limit supply, so prices rise artificially. Unless you’re Native American, your forefathers and mothers moved to the US at a time where it was easier to do so. That’s a…

When my ancestors came to Canada, they settled their own land, lost half the family in the winters, and many of them still ended up trying to return to Ireland. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how that's an "easier" experience than the route taken by folks today. There's tens of thousands of acres unsettled land left in Canada, but for whatever reason the vast majority of our new Canadians end up in the GTA. The pr…

Easier from the perspective of getting a visa. You won the lottery is what I said.

I live in a country where we seem to work hard to keep people from neighbouring countries out. It does nothing for our competitiveness, just allows the current inhabitants who pretty much did nothing except have the right ancestors to get benefits and opportunities that neighbours don’t have.

In your case, Canada benefits greatly from the US having a more restrictive immigration policy. Net positive for Canada. It’s a total failure to have smart people not able to enter your country, because they’ll go somewhere. Quote SamA: https://twitter.com/sama/status/1554459751353683969

If that doesn’t convince you, consider the case of Russia now, with people leaving daily. If immigration is net negative then surely Russia is winning hand over fist because people are leaving the country in droves. Obviously not. It’s a horror show for them.

Re: ‘Two years of lost immigration’ is responsible for half of missing workforce

#118

Post by lamontcg »

crmd wrote: post #10
nowandlater wrote: post #9

Also another factor, once employers start paying a market-clearing wage, then increase their prices, supply will meet demand.

…or not raise prices. I think the root cause of our broken economy is that way too much of gross margin has been flowing to owners/capital instead of workers.

That is because in the short-run everything is sticky so they resist spending more on salaries. So everyone is hiring, but nobody is willing to pay more. If conditions persisted then they'd be forced to start raising wages in order to increase output.

Due to the fact that we're also still fairly supply constrained on output they also resist hiring more workers at higher salaries when they're finding it hard to source their inputs (and since everyone is in that same boat, they're not missing out compared to their competitors by not focusing on increasing output).

And right now the Fed is also signalling that they're going to crash the economy so it makes absolutely zero sense to start hiring more people at higher wages right before a recession.

Re: ‘Two years of lost immigration’ is responsible for half of missing workforce

#119

Post by odysseus »

midoridensha wrote: post #102
odysseus wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's 60 million children missing over almost 50 years, or ~830K/year. But not all of these were "unwanted". Many women are pressured into abortion by abusive, manipulative, cowardly, and responsibility-shirking men. As for the truly unwanted ones, ~33 million couples in the U.S. are infertile. There are untold thousands of families waiting to adopt. A few of them are listed at https://www.americanadoptions.com/fami…

>But not all of these were "unwanted". Many women are pressured into abortion by abusive, manipulative, cowardly, and responsibility-shirking men. So if they didn't abort, how exactly were these children going to be raised? By homeless single mothers now that the cowardly, responsibility-shirking men have left them? You seem to think that preventing abortion will magically turn accidental parents into good parents. >…

I agree it's difficult to care for an impoverished child. My mom was a single mother that was close to becoming homeless, and we both survived. There are many free resources for single mothers. (for example, WIC, a program that provides nutritious free food for Women, Infants, and Children)

But imagine a two-year old child in front of you. His mother is poor and feels she cannot care for him. He lives in the slums of a country where children cannot be adopted. Should his mother be allowed to kill him?

> We'll also never know how many people who made big contributions would have been murdered by unwanted, abused, and neglected children who grew up to become criminals.

It's probably true that if we kill impoverished unwanted toddlers, future crime rates could potentially decline. That doesn't make it moral to do so.

Re: ‘Two years of lost immigration’ is responsible for half of missing workforce

#120

Post by bibanez »

odysseus wrote: post #46
bibanez wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't see any systems in place for raising 60 million unwanted children. Would you be able to raise any yourself? There's a gap between understanding the numbers and practice.

That's 60 million children missing over almost 50 years, or ~830K/year. But not all of these were "unwanted". Many women are pressured into abortion by abusive, manipulative, cowardly, and responsibility-shirking men. As for the truly unwanted ones, ~33 million couples in the U.S. are infertile. There are untold thousands of families waiting to adopt. A few of them are listed at https://www.americanadoptions.com/fami…

Interesting perspective, I see how my argument doesn't work. Still, I can't help but feel that forcing a woman through pregnancy is justified if it's not consensual... I hope the technology for artificial uterus is developped during our lifetime
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