Foreign Workers Are Vital Part of US Labor Force
In the early 1970s, 4.7% of the U.S. population was an immigrant.
- Today 15% of the total population is an immigrant
- More than 1 in 4 US residents have at least one immigrant parent
- Up to 1 in 2 have at least one immigrant grandparent
- 1 in 5 workers is an immigrant
- 1 in 4 businesses is created by an immigrant
- Combining all of them, AI estimates a majority of the US population today has “close immigrant ties”.
The percent of the population who are immigrants will grow much more in the coming decades, due to a policy supportive of immigration to meet labor needs, as the U.S. fertility rate collapsed in the 1970s. Without immigration now, the U.S. population would be shrinking. Immigration is seen as a way to increase the labor supply – although, dozens of countries are faced with the same demographic collapse and it is unclear there will be sufficient skilled immigrants willing to move to other countries. That is also because global economic success now reaches most countries of the world, with the global poverty rate having also collapsed (which is a good thing). Fewer people will be compelled to move due to local economic issues and lack of local opportunities.
The past larger number of native workers who began work in the 1970s and 1980s (when immigration was low) are aging out of the workforce, while the immigrant workforce is now growing rapidly, resulting in a shift towards a workforce that will increasingly be immigrants versus native workers.
Those of us that lack close immigrant ties are a minority group.
My closest immigrant relatives are a great grandmother born in what is today, Germany, in 1874, and a great grandfather, born in Switzerland in 1869.
After that, a great grandfather born in Norway in 1831, and a great grandmother, born in Norway in 1837.
I have other direct line ancestry born in the future U.S. in the the 1600s (as far back as 1624) and the 1700s. In other words, a very long history in what is or would become the U.S.
How could I have great grandparents born so long ago, especially in the 1830s? My great grandfather was 51 years old when my grandmother, a 12th child (3 of their kids died as children and 2 died as young adults – the parents would outlive 5 of their own children), was born. My grandmother, in turn, had 4 kids – and my Mom was the last of the 4 kids. My Mom had 4 kids – and I was the third, born when she was about 40 years old. Being on the “last” or nearly last kid of each generation born to older parents tended to add another “generation” span at each generation, creating an unusually long age range.
The typical or average age difference between your own birth date and a great grandparent is about 75 years; for me it is more than 130 years.
This has the oddity that I have a great grandfather that participated in the US Civil War (for the Union, from Wisconsin). For most who have an ancestral connection to the Civil War it is their great-great grandparent or great-great-great grandparent – and not so close as a great-grandparent.