Brent Orrell and Keith Humphreys published a thoughtful piece in The Atlantic last week on the issue of men dropping out of the labor force. Although the authors seem open to several possible remedies, they underplay the role of immigration — as one of the causes of the labor force dropout and, more important, as a disincentive to pursuing a full set of solutions.
To quickly recap the problem: The share of working-age U.S.-born men who are “out of the labor force,” meaning neither working nor looking for work, has been gradually rising for decades. It was 11 percent in 1960, 15 percent in 1970, 17 percent in 2000, and 22 percent this April. We know from the American Time Use Survey that these men have not abandoned work because they are doing something else productive, such as taking care of a loved one or volunteering in the community. Instead, they are using their free time mainly to sleep, watch television, and play video games.
The sources of this problem are surely varied, as Orrell and Humphreys emphasize, but the authors dismiss immigration as one causal factor without any analysis. In reality, economic research has repeatedly found that immigration reduces the wages of existing workers with whom the immigrants most directly compete. Furthermore, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission cases show a clear pattern in which employers of low-skill labor favor immigrants over natives. I don’t mean “favor” as in they show some kind of subtle statistical preference. I mean they allegedly announce things like “All you Americans are fired” to large groups of workers.
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