A common right-wing grievance is that undocumented (“illegal”) immigrants are taking all the jobs. In particular, that they’re stealing jobs from native-born Americans. What’s the evidence?
If it were true that immigrants were stealing jobs from native born Americans, then if you plotted labor force participation by native- and foreign-born over time, they would have a reciprocal relationship. As non-native participation rose, native participation would fall. Over at jabberwocking.com, Kevin Drum posts the graph, and it shows that both native and non-native participation move in tandem. I don’t see any evidence for job stealing there.One problem with the job-stealing hypothesis is that it is based on the lump-of-labor fallacy. In this model,
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