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Comment by UncleOxidant | Hacker News Reader

But the economy is pretty great: 4.1% unemployment - I'm old enough to remember when 5% was considered full employment, inflation rate back down close to pre-covid levels, manufacturing up, etc. EXCEPT there's one big problem with our economy: Housing. There's not enough of it so prices for housing are very high relative to incomes. The solution: Build a lot more houses. Harris mentioned this, though I don't recall a lot of details for how they were going to get there. If a lot of people didn't have to pay more than a third, sometimes over half of their income for housing the inflation wouldn't have been nearly as painful.

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Foreign born employment increased [1], while native born employment actually decreased [2]. My wife combined the graphics [3]. The axes are in thousands of persons, so we lost 4 million native jobs and gained 4.2 million foreign born jobs. Coincidentally, that is about how many votes the democrats lost by.

1. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU02073395

2. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU02073413

3. https://i.imgur.com/KtBGrkg.png

Your wife's graph is massively misleading. Why would you choose to put two different scales on the y-axis when they are already in the same units? The reality of the data you linked to is that the 5 million job difference you claim is pretty much an arbitrary artifact based on whatever month you place your starting line, the amount of native jobs is essentially flat from pre-pandemic. The amount the foreign-born jobs changed is on the same order of magnitude as seasonal fluctuations in native-born jobs and would barely register as a blip if you used a fair and consistent scale.

I thought the GPs post was an interesting claim so I dug into it and I think you may be wrong in this case, let me know if I have made any mistakes or misunderstood some of the data.

If you go to https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU02073413#0 and click Edit Graph, then Add Line (at the top) then add LNU02073395 (Foreign Born dataset) and then export to CSV it's relatively clear that in 2007-01-01 (start of dataset) at 18.3% of jobs were held by foreign born individuals, and by 2024-10-01 (end of dataset) it was 23.7%. When reviewing the slope of the data, it's not tied to the month of choice, there is a relatively clear linear trend over time. Jobs as a % are being taken from native born Americans.

If we look into census data at https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2024/demo/acsbr... we see that as of 2022, 13.9% of the US population was foreign born. If 13.9% of the population hold 22.5% (2022-12-01 data from the fed) of the jobs, I can see why some people may have a concern there. Furthermore, if we look at sources of immigration in the census data, we see that roughly 50% come from Latin America, which has the highest percentage (79.7%) of individuals in working age (18-64) of which 82.8% do not have a bachelors degree of higher. Also, in support of the previous paragraph, the census data shows us that as of 2022, 66.9% of foreign born individuals held a job vs 62.9% native born.

I see a very persuasive argument for "they took our jobs" here.

In practice, my guess is that it's much more complex than that, but I do see how the raw numbers support the argument.

Here's what you are missing, the relative populations of native born and foreign born have changed over that time period. If you do the same thing for the population data (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/seriesBeta/LNU00073413) you see that the graphs are almost exactly the same. % of foreign born population goes from 17.5% to 22%, versus the 18.3% to 23.7% you called out for job change.

Yes I agree that the two align (and that I should have compared FRED to FRED vs bringing in Census data). But the best way I add what you wrote to what I wrote is would be:

"Immigrants are coming at a rate that increases their portion of the population and thus their portion of jobs" which squares pretty directly with the "they took our jobs" arguments?

But the data evidence we are discussing doesn't show any squaring of your statement at all. The only thing it shows is that the the amount of foreign-born individuals has increased, and that they hold down jobs at essentially the same rate as native-born Americans. If the data didn't look like that people would be complaining that immigrants are lazy, and don't work and are dragging down the economy. It's all a big nothingburger.

I don't see how you can possibly say that. If in 2007 you went to 100 jobs you would see 18.3% of foreign born people holding them vs 23.7% now. This is a change of nearly 30%. Of course people notice this and are concerned about it.

I am not arguing against immigration in any way (I am both an immigrant and a refugee), but I do recognize why someone who sees this on the ground feels the way they do.

But it just simply is an argument against immigration, which we can totally have but which Is a different discussion. Unless you are suggesting that you want increased immigration, but for them not to be employed, which I think would be an extremely niche position.

> there's one big problem with our economy: Housing. There's not enough of it so prices for housing are very high relative to incomes.

Swing and miss. We will have the record high ratio of housing per capita within the next 2-3 years. We're WAY above 1980-s, and only slightly below the 2006 levels.

But you're actually getting closer to the truth: economic forces are pushing people to move into ever-densifying urban areas, that simply will NEVER have low housing prices. And it's a nearly zero-sum game, so every unhappy worker in a tiny flat paying 40% of their salary in rent, means that there's a new abandoned house somewhere in Iowa.

This in turn makes people in Iowa poorer, and they start hating the city population.

Building more houses in big cities will NOT solve this. We need a concerted push to revive smaller cities, by mandating remote work where possible. Another alternative is taxing the dense office space.

Labour force participation is what, 3 million below 2019? It's really bad.

Isn't a lot of that boomers retiring early? I'm a 61 year old that's not participating in the labor force because I'm tired of playing the tech interview games (I don't blame this on the Biden admin) and I don't need to participate anymore. My wife who is 63 would like to work again after being laid off last year, but ageism seems to be a very real thing so she hasn't gotten hired anywhere (again, not Biden's fault that ageism is a thing). Since labor participation rate is determined by working age population (16 to 64) I guess we're both contributing to that lower labor participation rate. (and come to think of it both my sister and my wife's sister are in a similar situation, both around 60)

The people living 4.1% unemployment have (one or more) zero hour jobs where you don't know if you even have work each week, let alone the hours (but always less than 36) until the start of the week, with no benefits, living paycheck to paycheck, dealing with the hassle of having roommates at home so no place to truly unwind, and a huge cut to food they can afford which was really their last form of comfort. Car costs have gone up to the point they are just holding on to what they have hoping it keeps running.

This isn't a 1960s 4.1% unemployment good economy. And it's no way to live. You are forced into a state where are you constantly reacting out of stress, not really living. You can't blame those people for not understanding the nuance of your 'the economy is great, this is what good looks like'. It's not fair to call them bad/dumb people because of it. They are good people struggling out here in the trenches.

You're not wrong, but it's tough to see how electing a more pro-business (ultra pro-business) president/party is going to fix that. They're going to take away even more worker rights as they favor business.

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