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Economy Adds 339K Jobs in May; Immigration Providing Majority of New Workers

Yesterday’s jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed 339,000 jobs added in May, bringing the total new jobs created since President Joe Biden took office to over 13 million. While unemployment ticked up to 3.7%, President Biden that we’ve gone 16 straight months with unemployment under 4%, a consistent low the United States hasn’t seen since the 1960s (specifically, two good 17-month and 27-month streaks from February 1966 through January 1970, interrupted by a 4.0% blip in October 1967).

Tucked away in NPR’s breakdown of what that seemingly good employment news means is a link to a May 18 BLS report on foreign-born workers which notes that a lot of that good jobs news comes from immigrants. In 2022, unemployment among foreign-born people in the U.S. dropped from 5.6% to 3.4%. Unemployment among native-born Americans dropped from 5.3% to 3.7%. Before the pandemic, unemployment was 3.1% for foreign-born folks and 3.8% for us natives.

The labor force grew 1.91% in 2022, gaining 3.08 million new workers. 1.77 million of those new workers were born outside the United States. Foreign-born workers made up only 18.1% of the total civilian workforce in 2022, but those immigrants made up 57.3% of the new workers.

America’s workforce is growing, and the majority of that growth comes from immigrants. If we want to keep the economy growing we should send the National Guard to the border with clipboards and work visa applications.

18 Comments

  1. P. Aitch 2023-06-03 09:45

    Joe Steady to the rescue. 🛟

  2. Mike Lee Zitterich 2023-06-03 10:34

    Of course it are Immigrants, probally tons of illegal immigrants coming across the Southern Border, since we know Biden is Anti-American, and leading the charge to allow for China to take control of the United States. “WE” will learn more of this as the Biden Investigation comes out with more facts about how involved the Biden’s are invested in Chinese Businesses in China, especially those businesses investing their profits in the China Communist Party, let alone their Military. This was what The Trump Executive Order 13959 was attempting to block. It is unlawful combination for any such American to invest in Foreign Business, of where their profits go to support a Foreign Enemy. With Chinese Businesses every day becoming more vested in owning land in America, look for more Chinese jobs coming to our shores in the future. We will learn one day in the future, just how involved China has been in our “Federal and State Elections” thanks to Executive Order 13971 and thanks to 13959, we will learn of how many Americans are manipulating our economy when we learn how many Americans are invested in Chinese Businesses, where those profits are being used to build up the CPP and the China Military agaisnt the United States.
    Lets not forget, the millions of dollars the Biden Family got from Ukraine between 2014 to 2017, all of which provided them the funding to invest in those Chinese Businesses, and thanks to Executive Order 13848 – ‘we’ will discover the fraud that led to manipulating the 2020 and 2022 Federal Elections leading to such a huge manipulation of absentee and mail ballots. The truth is, Biden did NOT get 7,000,000 more votes than Trump – and if TRUMP had got a record amount of votes, 74,000,000 votes, do you really believe Biden got legally, 80,000,000 votes? Now, today, ‘we’ have this influx of Chinese Businesses coming to the United States, buying large tracts of land, building their empire right here in America, leading to an influx of Chinese Immigration, let alone Cheap Labor coming across the Southern Border, this is what is manipulating our wages, let alone stealing jobs from Americans today…

  3. All Mammal 2023-06-03 10:53

    It must be truly difficult to find anything to complain about. Some people, like KN and her bellyaching pals, just seem to have a knack for bitsching.

    Meanwhile, we could use the National Guard’s help here in Rapid City. Murder, bloody murder, death, rape, and suicide are happening here everyday. I am not exaggerating. 6 yr old shot last week and the guy is still at large. Two days later, on the same street, cops shoot what witnesses say was an unarmed man so many times that a bullet ricocheted off him and struck another unarmed man. One is dead. The RCPD says the eyewitnesses are giving a “false narrative”.
    We have a maga dude running for our school board who says on his twitter he is ready to die killing Democrats and all opioid users can go die and he openly calls women the C-word. He should be on the Terrorist watch, not serving on the school board. We had a bomb threat yesterday, another rando shooting…. I know personally three Natives whose murders are unsolved since 2019….WE could use some help.

  4. larry kurtz 2023-06-03 11:04

    Now, with Montana in the news and China in the crosshairs of white nationalists it must be time to remind more readers that liberal democrat President Thomas Jefferson used an executive order to seize land from Indigenous people, then from west to east enslaved Chinese immigrants built the railroads in the 1800s.

    South Dakota’s current Republican governor wants to restrict land ownership by “countries that hate us.” Fact is, of the 195 countries on the planet most them probably hate us but many have parts of the trillions stashed in the state’s banks and trusts anyway.

    Kristi Noem’s target is China even after her predecessors sold green cards to Chinese investors through the EB-5 program and the cash funneled into some 90 dairies, a cheese factory, a slaughterhouse and even into the Deadwood Mountain Grand resort. They’re all struggling to find help right now because the crappy pay, the worse weather and the governor’s lackadaisical attitude about pandemic protocols threatening human life. Recall she called Georgia’s two Democratic US Senators, Communists from the state that controls much of the means of production.

    Probing the undercurrent that ties the unsolved death of South Dakota’s Richard Benda in 2013 with his EB-5 past remains a mystery for the political junkies who follow Joop Bollen’s role in the scandal. The late Republican former Governors Frank Farrar and Bill Janklow built the dynasty trust industry.

    China hates South Dakota because the state screwed Chinese job creators out of at least $100 million. Republican former Governor now US Senator Mike Rounds began courting Chinese money in 2004 but escaped a thorough probe of his part in the racket or in Rich Benda’s death.

  5. larry kurtz 2023-06-03 11:19

    There may be no amount of money some employers can pay workers who already know the risks of working for The Man.

    In 2020 I called for a general strike to sink the Trump Organization and today the movement has morphed into what Anthony Klotz, an organizational psychologist at Texas A&M University, is calling The Great Resignation. Talent is fleeing red states as Republicans tout dystopianism as the best feature of their offerings to employees. But, it’s not about laziness, it’s about equity or Maria shrugged, if you will. Republicans in Montana and South Dakota are bragging about low unemployment rates but seem to be ignoring the cascading brain drain in both states.

    According to WalletHub Montana is third of states where workers are fleeing but South Dakota is fifth in percentage of workers seeking unemployment claims and second in number of workers over 65. Because of talent flight and brain drain South Dakota is among the least innovative states, ranks 50th in venture capital spending per capita, 47th in R&D spending and 51st in share of tech companies.

    Montana has regained the top spot as the most lucrative state for doctors with South Dakota a close second. South Dakota has the fourth least punitive medical board and second lowest payout for malpractice while pay for doctors in Montana is fifth best but South Dakota is 29th in competition among physicians.

    State government in Montana is seventh of states reliant on the feds for support and South Dakota is fourth. Wyoming is the most dependent.

    Mrs. Noem’s christianic religionists are apparently void of any compassion and choose to blame Democrats for inflation as labor shortages drive wage increases. It’s hypocritheocracy on meth.

  6. Phil 2023-06-03 12:12

    It occurs to me the immigrant problem somewhat resembles the drug problem. The demand north of the border drives the supply side south of the border. It will be interesting to see how the DeSantis immigration laws play out with the Florida agriculture, building, and service industries. I suspect if strict enforcement is carried out (a big if) and penalties are imposed on noncompliant employers there will be plenty of blowback. If, as has been stated, the border problem is every state’s problem, the SoDak Guard might be put to better use making weekly paperwork inspections of the state’s farm operations, packing plants, contractors, Black Hills tourist traps and so on; to root out and eliminate the demand for illegal employees.

  7. e platypus onion 2023-06-03 12:13

    Mike Lee, the resident magat troll, is rehashing debunked magat talking points from years gone by, and should be forced to beg Cory to repent and apologize for spreading magat debunked BULLSPIT! What a maroon!!

  8. Mike Lee Zitterich 2023-06-03 13:23

    Troll -a person who intentionally antagonizes others online by posting inflammatory, irrelevant, or offensive comments or other disruptive content. Internet trolls. In the late 1980s, Internet users adopted the word “troll” to denote someone who intentionally disrupts online communities.

    Magot -a small, grotesque Japanese or Chinese carved figure.

    Debunked – to show that something is less important, less good, or less true than it has been made to appear

    Well, by calling me names, the “resident magot troll” makes no sense, since I am a life time Resident and proud American Citizen of South Dakota, and that fact alone allows me to provide to any other resident of the State to provide to other my opinion, thoughts and ideas. Since I am not a grotesque Japanese, nor Chinese carved figure, I cannot be a magot, and since a TROLL was created a small class of internet persons who referred to anyone who thought differently, forming difference of opinions than them, I guess I could be proud to voice my own opinion, facts, and ideas totally opposite from what many of you believe.

    It all makes sense now, you refer to me as a Chinese or Japanese Carved Figure, who comes to troll you with opinions, thoughts, and ideas different than your small group of persons who use the internet to spread gossip that may or may not be true, allowing us to debate each other on whose ideas, opinions, thoughts should be considered less important than the other.

    I suppose, I should take it as a compliment, that you call me a Resident Magot Troll, but I will respond by, saying, those who call names, those of whom, refer to yourselves as a small group of persons who attempt to promote, support or create opposition for a political or social cause, especially by repeatedly raising the issue and bringing awareness to our different opinions an facts.

    I thank you, sincerely,

  9. larry kurtz 2023-06-03 13:31

    I phoned the son of an old friend who took over his dad’s successful painting business based in Spearditch and asked him whether Spanish speakers still do much of the work in the trades. He said many drive back and forth from Gillette, Wyoming after collapse of the coal industry and Lawrence County’s property crimes and violence among rival workers peaked in 2018 now Rapid City sees the bulk of the construction site thefts, drunken brawls and housing overcrowding. He told me that in Hill City Spanish speakers became the only applicants for employment at the Neiman-owned sawmill so after Donald Trump was forced from office he shuttered it. The old Homestake mill in Spearditch, now also a Neiman property, is experiencing a similar phenomenon.

    As young people and Democrats flee South Dakota more brown people are doing the work in the red moocher state. Meat processors and industrial agriculture employ the greatest numbers of Hispanics in South Dakota. Spanish speakers prop up the federally subsidized dairy industry East River but in Huron Karen refugees slaughter and process turkeys. The crony capitalism that keeps South Dakota the 8th worst state for the working class is destroying lands promised to native peoples by treaty and my home town of Elkton is struggling to find enough housing for migrant workers often living in squalor.

    What do these climate refugees and migrant workers have in common with their Midwest counterparts? Christianity. “Pro-life” is simply code for white people breeding. African-Americans terminate pregnancies at about the same per capita rate as white people do but don’t take their jobs. Latinas, however, have fewer abortions per capita and the extreme white wing of the Republican Party knows it’s hemorrhaging jobs to Latinos.

    And as the Republican Party caves on immigration after Governor Kristi Noem said she won’t accept Afghan compatriots in South Dakota wage slaves could make real social justice change by walking off their jobs then calling for a general strike and bring Kristi to her senses, too. But until Democrats seize power nothing will ever change.

    The reasoning is hardly mysterious: it’s all about the money prostitution, the Sturgis Rally, policing for profit, sex trafficking, hunting and subsidized grazing bring to the South Dakota Republican Party destroying lives, depleting watersheds and smothering habitat under single-party rule.

  10. Arlo Blundt 2023-06-03 14:06

    Mr. Zitterich..you are talking nonsense again…Anyone invested in Mutual Funds (and there are millions of us) is invested in Chinese Businesses…Mutual funds diversify their investments to protect against loss and are often global in their scope. Wake up and understand globalism.

  11. Anne 2023-06-03 14:55

    Just to be accurate about language: the transliteration of the acronym of Trump’s slogan, MAGA, is not “magot,” a barbary ape or a grotesque oriental figurine, but is “maggot,” fly larva which feeds on carrion and young plants, thus killing them.

  12. e platypus onion 2023-06-03 15:17

    Resident troll, facts are what you don’t spew. Yer a magat unhitched from reality, just like drumpf. You take the long way around the barn to spew garbage. Less is more. Learn how to be appreciated.

  13. Donald Pay 2023-06-03 16:05

    One thing you can count on is that white racists and fascists need a bogeyman. Chinese will do, or Latinos, or blacks, or Jews. Catholics even. Many of our ancestors have been there at one time or another. “Othering” of people, and inventing conspiracy theories seems to be the hallmark for “conservatives.”

    Back in WWI-era America, Mr. Zitterich, the Germans took their turn in the barrel here in the US. My grandmother was a German immigrant. She spoke Low German and where she went to church, it was a German service. Back then there were all sorts of conspiracy theories about people in your ethnicity, Mike Z. It was unfair. We look back at those people who harassed your grandparents and mine as stupid oafs. Don’t, be a stupid oaf.

    My grandmother would laugh and her stomach would roll as I sat on her lap. She thought I was pretty funny, I guess. I can’t imagine that anyone would think this funny grandma, as a little girl, would be thought of as just another fish in the barrel, separated from her parents who loved her and whom she loved, and be called names by the President of the United States. I think about my grandmother being a little girl and coming to a new country because they didn’t like the belligerence and militarization of their country at the time. How could anyone say that the good Republican Presidents of that era were wrong in taking in those folks? How could anyone defend that oaf of a President who created so much pain for little children whose parents only wanted a better life for them.

  14. larry kurtz 2023-06-03 16:31

    Indeed. It is so mournfully pathetic that there are so many Republicans with such morose appreciation for white privilege that brown people are simply gadgets to used then send to the landfill as refuse.

  15. larry kurtz 2023-06-03 16:37

    Yes, that is a horrible sentence but the crony capitalism that keeps South Dakota the 8th worst state for the working class is destroying lands promised to native peoples by treaty, infrastructure is crumbling and the state’s bureaucracy is overbearing and unwieldy. Ag groups want federally subsidized crop insurance and the right to pollute. Corruption and graft are commonplace.

  16. Richard Schriever 2023-06-03 23:24

    Phil,
    “…..DeSantis immigration laws…..” you say??? FYI – states have NO legal authority over immigration – NONE – Zip, NADA, ZERO, Nut’in’.

  17. Phil 2023-06-04 07:29

    Richard, You are exactly right, which is what makes his law(lessness) interesting to observe.

  18. P. Aitch 2023-06-05 06:24

    Sorry sorry, SD majority! You’re even more meaningless on a national scale than ever before in history!
    – In the 2018 elections — the midterms of Donald Trump’s presidency — turnout among younger voters surged. Almost twice as many people in their late 20s and early 30s voted that year as had done so in the midterms four years earlier. And they strongly backed Democratic candidates, helping the party retake control of Congress.
    At the time, it was not clear whether the newfound political engagement of younger adults would last beyond Trump’s presidency. So far, though, it has — and it’s emerging as one of the biggest stories in American politics and a major advantage for the Democratic Party. – NYTIMES this morning

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