Deportations are likely to cause employers to let go of US workers, and reduce the labor force
The government shutdown may have prevented the publication of September’s job report, but we can be reasonably confident that when the numbers are known, they will further underscore the Trump administration’s policy incoherence and remind us of all of the damage he is prepared to inflict on the American economy.
The president will most likely be apoplectic over data confirming that the economy is generating very few new jobs (the payroll processor ADP estimated a loss of 32,000 private sector jobs in September). Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which produces the jobs numbers, after a lackluster report published in August.
But in the office of his deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, champagne is likely to flow. For Miller, the dismal job growth is largely due to the war against immigrants he has masterminded from his perch on the White House’s second floor.
The cognitive disconnect ultimately stems from a stubborn misrepresentation preached across the administration about the impact of immigrants on the American economy: that every immigrant expelled from the workforce frees up a job to be readily filled by an unemployed American. In Miller’s words: “Mass deportation will be a labor-market disruption celebrated by American workers, who will now be offered higher wages with better benefits to fill these jobs.”
