Key Points
If we compare the current state of the U.S. economy with Congressional Budget Office projections made just before the pandemic, we find that real gross domestic product has risen by about 1 percentage point more than expected, while employment exceeds its projected level by 2.9 million workers...
A recent Goldman Sachs analysis shows no rise in native-born unemployment during the immigration surge..
But many (although not all) academic studies find that immigration has little effect on the wages of native-born workers, even when those workers have similar education levels..
Goldman argues that the rise in foreign-born unemployment reflects a long-standing tendency for recent immigrants to have relatively high unemployment, presumably because it takes some time for many of them to get settled into sustained employment; unemployment is much lower among immigrants who have been here three years or more...
The bottom line is that while America's immigration system is dysfunctional and really needs more resources -- resources it would be getting if Republicans, pushed by Trump, hadn't turned their backs on a bill they helped devise -- the recent surge in immigration has actually been good for the economy so far, and gives us reason to be more optimistic about the future...
