The Biden immigration policy has brought this nation to its knees. It runs deeper than you could ever imagine.
And now an alarming report from the southern border is raising eyebrows across the country.
A new study from the Center for Immigration Studies highlights a glaring oversight in the push for more immigration to address workforce shortages: millions of U.S.-born men who have given up on work entirely.
These sidelined Americans, particularly those with lower levels of education, represent a massive untapped labor force that’s being ignored in favor of foreign workers.
The numbers paint a stark picture. One in six U.S.-born men aged 20 to 64 is not part of the labor force—meaning they don’t have a job and aren’t looking for one.
For men without a high school diploma, the situation is even bleaker: nearly 25% are absent from the workforce, a sharp increase from just 18% in 2000 and a dramatic rise from 9% in 1970.
These are the same individuals most likely to compete with low-skilled immigrants for jobs, according to Steven A. Camarota, the study’s author.
“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.
Generous welfare programs and shifting cultural norms may also be contributing to the crisis, incentivizing men to abandon the workforce. Camarota estimated that if U.S.-born men were working at the same rates as they did in 2000, the labor force would have 4.4 million additional workers.
But their absence isn’t just an economic problem—it’s a social one. Men who are out of the workforce are more likely to struggle with issues like poverty, mental health problems, obesity, drug overdoses, suicides, and reckless alcohol use. These challenges create a vicious cycle that keeps many from returning to work.
“The social problems contribute to what happens to these men,” Camarota explained. “If we could get more of them back into the labor force, especially ones in their 20s, that would help head off a lot of these problems, or mitigate them.”
While the problem of jobless men isn’t new—some historians even link it to the motivations behind the Crusades—Camarota’s suggestion that immigration exacerbates the issue is highly contentious.
Immigration advocates argue that migrants are critical to the economy. Groups like America’s Voice claim immigrants represent one in six workers and play a vital role in sustaining social programs.
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI), a left-leaning think tank, even credits the Biden administration’s surge in migration with preventing higher inflation, asserting that immigration’s impact on wages is “neutral” or “slightly positive.”
But critics, like Tom Homan, President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming border czar, offer a starkly different view. Homan shared an anecdote about a roofing contractor who was forced to lay off 20 U.S. workers because he couldn’t compete with companies paying migrant laborers significantly less.
“That happens every day across this country, a thousand times,” Homan said.
Camarota agreed that meaningful change requires more than just coaxing men back into the labor force. Reforms to welfare and disability systems, job training programs, and higher wages are necessary. Crucially, he argued, reducing immigration must be part of the solution.
“We’re not getting everybody back in the labor force,” Camarota admitted. “The question is can we do better, and I think we can, but we never will as long as we have the immigration.”
Interestingly, women have been stepping up to fill workforce gaps. In the early 1960s, nearly half of women aged 18-64 were out of the labor force. Today, that number has dropped to just over a quarter, reflecting a historic shift in workforce participation.
The debate over immigration and labor is far from settled. But as millions of American men remain on the sidelines, policymakers may need to take a hard look at whether the focus on immigration is ignoring a homegrown solution.
Stay tuned to Prudent Politics.
