Tag Archives: labor force participation

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...

Earlier this summer, four economists released a working paper suggesting that part of the decline in male labor-force participation can be attributed to the increased quality of video games. You can see an article about it here, and you can also see a non-technical summary of the paper as part of the NBER digest.Conceptually at least, this makes sense- better leisure activities increase the opportunity cost of working, which decreases the net benefit of working, and generally we do less of...