Debunking Migrants Taking "Black Jobs"

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now, more on migration for part of the next conversation. We're going to look at the effects of recent migration on New York City's job market and talk about some other economic news with reporter and analyst, and economics reporting professor at the Newmark School of Journalism at CUNY, Greg David; our friend Greg David, who comes on frequently to talk about economic news. By now, you've probably heard that former President Trump claims that the recent influx of migrants poses a threat to native-born people of color, particularly the Black population of our country, in terms of the job market. If you haven't heard, here's a 30-second clip of Trump doubling down on this assertion at the National Association of Black Journalists convention a few weeks ago.

Trump: Coming from the border are millions and millions of people who happen to be taking Black Jobs. You had the best--

Female Speaker: What exactly is a Black Job, sir?

Trump: A Black Jos is anybody that has a job. That's what it is, anybody that has a job,-

Female Speaker: All right. Mr. President, can I--

Trump: -and they're taking the employment away from Black people. They're coming in and they're coming in, they're invading. It's an invasion of millions of people, probably 15 million, 16 million, 17 million people. I have a feeling it's much more than that. Everybody's been seeing what's happened. The first group of people, the Black population, is affected most by that.

Brian Lehrer: Apart from the shock factor of Trump trying to explain what a Black Job is after using that phrase, that clip highlights growing tension within our nation, right? Particularly pronounced in our city, given our demographics and income inequality. I just mentioned more students in poverty being counted among the students in the New York City public schools and the inflow of newcomers. There's a sense that our job market is a zero-sum game of sorts. As migrants move into the city, wages are theoretically depressed and more people compete for fewer and fewer jobs.

We hear this concern from listeners whenever we talk about immigration. Headlines like this one, "Longstanding New York City migrants pushed out of jobs by newcomers." Another one is, "Get the F" word I can't say "out of here, from the New York Post, further propagating that concern. It makes a certain intuitive sense, maybe it makes a certain mathematical sense. The more people for the same number of jobs, the market is going to push down wages. A recent analysis of New York City's labor market from the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School found these claims to be unsubstantiated.

To put it in Trump's terms, No, migrants are not stealing "Black Jobs." Joining us now to delve deeper into this analysis is Greg David, contributor covering fiscal and economic issues for the news organization, THE CITY, and director of the business and economics reporting program and the Ravitch Fiscal Reporting Program at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Hi, Greg.

Greg David: Glad to be back, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start with the claim from Trump that migrants are taking, "Black Jobs." Despite the crassness of his language, he's tapping into a widely felt sentiment. Why is this a concern for New Yorkers, particularly Black New Yorkers, in the first place?

Greg David: Well, first of all, we are one of the centers of the migrant population. We've had some 240,000 migrants come to New York in the last 2 years, according to THE CITY, and we have a relatively high Black unemployment rate. These would be two matters of concern. There were so many things in your laying out of the problem that are just not true that I think we could start there.

First of all, immigration is one of the most intensively studied issues by economists around. The first thing is that it's not a zero-sum game. The economy is not a zero-sum game. Indeed, every study nationally shows that immigration boosts the economy. First of all, it creates more consumers, it provides more workers for the economy to expand, and in many significant ways- and there was just a study on this- recent immigrants pay a lot more in taxes than they get back, especially in terms of payroll taxes and Social Security. This intuitive, "It must be bad" idea has been proven wrong by economists over and over again.

Brian Lehrer: Is there evidence that this concern of increased competition in the labor market is materializing to any degree? Because we're talking about how many? Six figures, 100,000-plus of immigrants in a very short amount of time to New York. They're here for political asylum purposes, most of them say. Obviously, they want to work. Mayor Adams wants them to get work authorization quickly from the federal government so they can work. How quickly can the job market in the city expand?

Greg David: Well, it apparently is expanding well enough now. I think that there are statistics to look at. That's what the Center for New York City Affairs did. The first thing they looked at was the labor force growth among native-born New Yorkers. What we see is that people in the labor force are about at a historic high. If migrants and new immigrants were taking jobs from the native-born population, that number should be declining, and it should be declining because these people would get discouraged and leave the workforce. Secondly, if the jobs were being taken away from Black New Yorkers, the Black unemployment rate should be rising, and it's falling. It's fallen from 16% to 6%.

Brian Lehrer: Stop. Stop right there. Stop right there. There's the headline. Right? If the number of migrants looking for relatively low-skilled jobs means that they're taking jobs from a lot of lower-income, non-college-degree Black New Yorkers, which is the claim, then the Black unemployment rate should be rising. Instead, I think you just said it's falling precipitously.

Greg David: It's falling. It fell from 16% at the peak of the pandemic to 6% in the most recent quarter. Yes, it's falling. There's no sign that it's rising.

Brian Lehrer: To be fair, everybody's unemployment rate went up at the beginning of the pandemic and has come back down, more or less.

Greg David: Right. I think we should talk later about why it's too high and the Black unemployment rate is too high in New York. We'll leave that part for later. Look, Trump is making an assumption here that Blacks are disproportionately represented in the lowest possible jobs that you can have in the economy because that's what the migrants are doing. They're working in very low-level construction jobs. They're working as food messengers. He's assuming that Black workers have only the lowest jobs on the economic scale, and that's simply not true.

It is possible, and one of the headlines you read is that there could be competition between recent immigrants and the very recent immigrants for these jobs. There aren't good statistics to tell us whether that's true or not. That's where the competition might be, but even that is highly speculative. Then, on the other point that you raised about wages, this has been intensively studied. Because of this dynamic of the kind of jobs new immigrants take, most economists say there is no evidence that immigration pushes down wages. We've seen no evidence of that in New York so far.

Greg David: Again, to be fair and point to nuances or uncertainties of the study, the non-citizens group of this study, the ones presumably, allegedly taking other people's jobs, the non-citizens group, I see refers to anyone living here without citizenship, whether you came here yesterday or 20 years ago. That does make it hard to get precise about the group compared to the newest migrants in the last few years. There still could be that people who are coming recently are competing with people who've been here for a while but are still non-citizens, if that makes sense.

Greg David: It does make sense. Now, the reason that actually, I was one of the people who prompted the center to do this research is because as I saw this play out on the national level, and there's been a lot of work on recent work, Paul Krugman has done a whole series of columns on this, I said to them, "Well, what about New York, which is one of the epicenters of where the immigration is?" They dug into the data to come up with the answer. Now, the data isn't as good locally as it is nationally. It's harder to get at. If there were a huge problem here, we should be picking up signs of it in the data, and we are not.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, your questions, comments, or stories about recent migration and jobs and wages in New York in particular, or other economic news. We're going to get to other economic news with Greg David. Heads up, Greg, I will ask you what the heck is going on with the stock market and other things.

Greg David: [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, 212-433-WNYC, call or text, 212-433-9692. Listener texts, "Many in New York City get paid under the table and taxpayers fund them. How are jobs that we consider under-the-table jobs accounted for in the analysis?"

Greg David: Many of the ways we do this would count people who don't have regular payroll jobs. For example, the way we figure out who's unemployed is we call households up. Yes, they use cell phones. There are a lot of people who do a lot of work on undocumented workers. Also, one of the things we're really interested in is change. The question we would have is, "Is there an enormous change in the number of people who are paid off the books?" It's always possible. No signs of it at the moment.

Brian Lehrer: Mary Alice in East Flatbush, you're on WNYC with Greg David.

Mary Alice: Hi. Good morning. Sometimes the data isn't obvious. I write for a local community-based newspaper here in Brooklyn. Over the years, I've gotten press releases from Schneiderman, from various city controllers, from various places where undocumented construction workers ended up not getting paid the prevailing construction wage. That was the incentive for the developers to hire them instead of hiring citizen construction workers. Schneiderman and the various city comptrollers and various entities would actually catch the developers underpaying the undocumented immigrants and then forcing the developers to pay them or give other kinds of sanctions. Those undocumented immigrants were displacing citizen construction workers, including people of color. When Bloomberg was in office, every square inch of brownfield was built. The people who were building them were not people who were citizens, it was undocumented immigrants.

Brian Lehrer: Mary Alice, let me follow up, just for people who don't know the historical reference to a pretty long past. New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, that's the Schneiderman I guess you're referring to. Are you saying, Mary Alice, that despite what this study finds and maybe with some reluctance to support Donald Trump on anything, I don't know your politics, that you think a lot of migrants coming at the same time are taking jobs that Black New Yorkers would otherwise get?

Mary Alice: I would never vote for doofus Trump IQ 45. Never ever. I have seen it with my own two eyes where in my own community when there was construction going on, it was not people in the community who were hired, it was undocumented immigrants. When Katrina happened, it was undocumented immigrants who came to clean up New Orleans.

Brian Lehrer: We don't know who's applying, but I hear the point that you're making. Mary Alice, I'm going to leave it there, for time. I'm going to follow up on her call, Greg, and say, we got another text which is accurate, listener says, "I remember a Black caller to your show who was a food messenger, who got less messenger jobs because of newly arrived immigrants." It's true. There was a recent caller who fit that description who did say that very recently, at least that was that caller's perception.

Greg David: Look, are there undocumented workers on construction sites in New York? Of course. Have there always been undocumented workers on some construction sites? Yes. Is it hard to do that these days with a lot of scrutiny of construction sites? Yes, as well. Are there occasional, or even more than occasional instances, of displacement or economic impact? Yes. What we are trying to figure out is whether there's a broad-scale major impact on the economy. The data says no. The data says recent immigrants are not taking Black Jobs, to use Trump's phrase.

Now, is there a problem with the Black unemployment rate in New York City? You bet there is.

Brian Lehrer: Why?

Greg David: It's 6%, not around 4%, which is the national rate. The question is why. The bottom part of my story talks about this. We have a structural problem in the New York City economy, in which too many Black New Yorkers have jobs in sectors of the economy that are not rebounding from the pandemic. Retail is one major one. Government is a surprising second one. Some portions of the healthcare market are a third one. These workers are having trouble pivoting to areas where there is more opportunity. The question that we have is why.

The economists I talk to believe it's a structural problem combined with what they call occupational racism. The mayor recently trumpeted the fact that the Black unemployment rate had fallen so much during his time as mayor, that's a fact, but it's much higher than the rest of the country. I've been writing about that for more than two years. He sees the glass as full and I see the glass as half empty, and we should spend more time on that. As one of the people I quote at the end of the story, who has spent practically his whole life studying the immigration issue says we should stop blaming the migrants for this problem and start working on the structural causes.

Brian Lehrer: Another listener texts, "As someone who works in economic development in Queens, I can tell you what I see is not an immigration crisis but a missed immigration opportunity. These people came here to work and to build businesses and we should be supporting them," writes one listener with a different perspective than the other text or the caller that we took.

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A few more minutes with Greg David, business and economics reporting professor at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY who writes about business and economics for the news organization THE CITY.

In our last stretch here, Greg, while you're here, let me ask you about some other economy in the news items. What's going on with the stock market?

Greg David: The stock market can't figure out where the economy is headed. The stock market has risen strongly because investors have poured into stocks that are believed to-- companies that are going to benefit enormously from artificial intelligence, particularly this company called Nvidia. Now everybody's worried whether the AI boom might be further off. The stock market doesn't know what to do, but that's because the economic outlook is very uncertain at the moment. We've seen signs that consumers are pulling back.

McDonald's complained and other fast food companies complained on their earnings that people aren't eating at their restaurants as much. We've begun to see some slowdown in travel. It could be that the high interest rates that the Fed put in effect to tamp down inflation are finally beginning to affect the economy in ways we thought would happen a year ago but did not.

Brian Lehrer: We have to take a short break. Then I want to follow up on that and talk more about the interest rates because it affects so many people who want to buy homes in other ways, and the inflation. It's got overtones, obviously, for the presidential race, we're expecting a Kamala Harris economic blueprint later this week. There's one tax cut that they're both now proposing, Trump and Harris, which is really interesting, and another one from Trump that's new that I think you're going to hate. You'll tell me if my prediction is right or wrong as we continue with Greg David right after this.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. A few more minutes with Greg David on economic news. To follow up on what you said just before the break, is this what the Federal Reserve Board has been trying to bring about; higher unemployment rates, lower growth in wages? We think of both of those things as bad, and the stock market is reacting with volatility to that, but this is what they've been trying to bring about with the high interest rates in order to slow inflation, which was considered the bigger problem. Is this calculated pain designed to result in a gain?

Greg David: Well, for a while, people have thought we were going to have a soft landing. A soft landing was defined as that we would bring inflation down without seeing a lot of pain, without seeing a much higher unemployment rate. That's what they were trying to do, but by the way, it had almost never been done in history. They achieved that for more than a year. Now there are signs that are coming that we are going to have an economic slowdown, but we don't know how severe. We don't know if it will be a "recession" with us losing jobs. High interest rates are taking a toll on the economy. Combined with the cumulative effects of inflation, we're seeing it with lower-income consumers, and we're going to have to see how far it goes.

Of course, now that we are close to the Fed's target of a 2% inflation rate, most people think the Fed can begin cutting interest rates. Long-term interest rates are already coming down, and this might boost the economy. Now, you raised the question of, "Are people buying homes?" That's a very important question here in New York City because rents in New York City have continued to go up for almost all this year at a time when they're declining elsewhere in the country. One of the prime reasons for this is that people who would normally be leaving their apartments to buy condos or coops in the city and homes in the suburbs have been stuck in the apartments because they can't afford higher mortgage rates.

We're not going to get any significant relief on rents until mortgage rates come down so these people who've wanted to buy homes for the last two years finally decide that they can afford to do it because mortgage rates have come down.

Brian Lehrer: On prices starting to come down for some things, listener writes, "McDonald's, Target, Walmart, and companies across the board engaged in price gouging. That's what was the driver of inflation, but we're not hearing enough about corporate greed." Maybe not "the" driver of inflation, like a single factor. Have you analyzed as a business and economics journalist, how much you could tell that was a factor and now maybe just consumers aren't going to take it anymore on some of those prices?

Greg David: This is a very interesting thing because when the corporate greed idea started and Elizabeth Warren was one of the key people, most economists dismissed it. Later on, economists began to say, well, I wouldn't necessarily call it corporate greed, but yes, corporations took advantage of an inflationary environment to increase prices. After all, the corporation's aim in life is to increase its profits. That's its legal obligation as an institution, but they can't increase profit-- They can't continue to do this if consumers block, and consumers are blocking, and so they are needing to adjust their prices. We have begun to see some decline.

Brian Lehrer: Where does the travel industry come into this? I saw that airline tickets are coming down. I gather there's a fare war, but also that the travel industry generally is seeing lower demand this summer. Is that a sign of anything beyond itself or why would some of the pain rest there right now?

Greg David: Well, it's because consumers are cutting back, and that's right. Airlines are actually, for the first time, starting to reduce schedules because they can't fill the planes. When they do that, airfares come down. It's a sign of the slowing economy, and it's something worth asking about. I actually just sent out a couple of emails this morning trying to see how much-- if that's affecting tourism in New York.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Donald Trump is proposing, and we're talking about interest rates again now, to end the Fed's independence. He, or presumably whoever, as president, could influence the interest rates, do you think that would be good, bad, or neutral for the overall economy?

Greg David: Oh, gee, why don't we want to become a third-world country, or maybe just like Russia and China? The Fed's independence has been crucial to the economic success story ever since the Fed came into existence around the First World War. Its powers were increased at the time of the depression. It is one of the stupidest ideas you could have. Almost as big a threat as the other things he has proposed to undermine democracy. Do you think that's a strong enough opinion, Brian?

Brian Lehrer: I think I understand where you stand on that now. Yes. Last thing, and I guess kind of related, maybe this is what you were just signaling when you referred to other things he's proposed. Kamala Harris has now matched Donald Trump in proposing no income tax on tips. Trump is also proposing no income tax on Social Security benefits. I assume they're both trying to, in a way, buy the votes of selected constituents, Latino hospitality industry and restaurant delivery workers, and in Trump's case, senior citizens generally. We remember Eric Adams when he was running for mayor, said, "You don't get elected by people on social media, you get elected by people on Social Security." It seems to me that that one is an especially bad idea and that you're going to think that just another tax cut for the wealthy because lower-income people on Social Security already pay little income tax. They're obviously in a low-income tax bracket. It really benefits a person the more income they have. Agree or Disagree?

Greg David: Me. Me, he's talking about me. He wants to give me a tax break.

Brian Lehrer: Me, Donald Trump, or me, you?

Greg David: No, he wants to give me "Greg David" a tax break. I'm so old, I collect Social Security and I don't have any penalty for working. I'm getting a lot of money from Social Security. Why should I not pay taxes on that? Well, they're both terrible ideas. Both terrible ideas. We should not have different taxes for different kinds of income, we should have a progressive tax-

Brian Lehrer: On everything.

Greg David: -that just applies to everything. Indeed, there's growing doubt that the tax break we give for capital gains is a good idea. I'm certainly entertaining that idea as well. Brian, you're exactly the sort of person-- Your portrait applies to me. I get income from the j school. I get income from writing for THE CITY. I get income from Social Security. I actually have to take some money out of my IRA every year because of how old I am and how much money it is. Why should I get this tax break? Do I deserve this tax break?

Brian Lehrer: Just one other implication of this that I think should be mentioned. At a time of deficits, when we're trying to fund Social Security long term, would this tax cut take money out of the Social Security fund for the future?

Greg David: No, not really, because Social Security is funded through the payroll tax. It would certainly increase the deficit, but it wouldn't directly affect the funding of Social Security. We have to do something. The Social Security system is not in bad trouble, as much trouble as the headlines would suggest, but it does need some funding changes. We can do that by taxing the rich if we ever decided to do that.

Brian Lehrer: Because the Social Security payroll taxes run out after a certain amount of your income. If you make a lot more than that, you're not paying tax for Social Security on that anymore. I know that's one proposal that we can come back to at a later date, as we have to leave it there for now with Greg David, contributor covering fiscal and economic issues for the news organization, THE CITY, and director of the business and economics reporting program and Ravitch Fiscal Reporting Program at the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Thanks as always, Greg.

Greg David: Thank you, Brian.

 

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