About 18% of U.S.-born men aged 20 to 64 are not part of the labor force, which is relevant to the immigration debate "because one of the arguments for allowing in so many legal immigrants, or even tolerating illegal immigration, is that there are not enough workers," said author Steven A. Camarota.
Camarota authored a new study on the decades-long increase in the share of Americans not in the labor force and the implications for immigration policy.
"If the argument is that we don't have enough of those workers, what that ignores is all the people on the economy's sidelines who themselves are overwhelmingly people who don't have a college education," Camarota told The Washington Times.
Camarota defines "not in the labor force" as neither working nor looking for work.
The percentages of U.S.-born men with all education levels aged 20 to 64 not in the labor force has risen since 1960, when it was 6.7%. In 1970, that figure was 9.3%, 11.5% in 1980, 12% in 1990, 13.3% in 2000, 15.2% in 2006, 17.6% in 2019. The percentage dipped slightly in 2024 to 17.5%.
Those numbers change when a bachelor's degree is thrown into the equation, with 9.6% in the same age group not part of the labor force in 2024.
It's worse for men who never made it beyond high school. Nearly 25% aren't in the workforce; that figure was less than 18% in 2000 and as low as 9% in 1970.
America's Voice, a leading immigration group, told The Washington Times that immigrants "are not only major participants in the U.S. workforce, representing one in six U.S. workers, they are significant contributors to our economy and help keep critical social programs alive."
Immigration this year increased by almost 2.8 million people, partly because of a new method of counting that adds people who were admitted for humanitarian reasons. Net international migration accounted for 84% of the nation's 3.3 million-person increase from 2023-24.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.