America's workforce is becoming less American.
Newly released data Researchers at the Center for Immigration Studies show that fewer native-born Americans are participating in the labor force, and that the largest decline in recent decades has been among men. are sounding the alarm over the decline in the workforce.
“The percentage of U.S.-born men of working age (ages 16-64) not in the labor force has increased from 11% in April 1960 to 17% in April 2000 and 22% in April 2024. The analysis found that there was an increase in
“Among U.S.-born ‘prime-age’ men (ages 25-54), who are most likely to work, 4% were not in the labor force in April 1960, 9% in 2000, and by 2024. In 2017, it was 12%.
The study concluded that as of April last year, 43 million U.S.-born men and women between the ages of 16 and 64 were not working, an increase of 8.5 million since 2000.
And these numbers do not include the 9.7 million immigrants who are not in the labor force or the 5.8 million unemployed U.S.-born Americans.
The study notes that the United States has a vast untapped workforce, “challenging the argument that labor shortages necessitate reliance on illegal immigration.”
The study also found that the number of U.S.-born working-age men not in the labor force increased by 13.2 million from 1960 to 2024.
Meanwhile, the number of working-age immigrant men participating in the labor force increased by 14.1 million over the same period.
“Even if we focus only on U.S.-born men without a bachelor's degree and exclude teenagers, the proportion of people not in the labor force (ages 20 to 64) has increased from 7% in 1960 to 2000. 16% in 2020, and rising to 22% in 2024, the study found.
The states with the largest increases in working-age men from the labor force were Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, Alaska, Florida, New Jersey, Mississippi, North Carolina, and California.
The study also noted that the number of women participating in the workforce has declined since 2000, a trend that briefly reversed after the pandemic.
