econometrics, unemployment, labor, immigrationIt is common for common sense discussions to take it as a fact that jobs at any particular time are finite and that immigrants “take” local jobs. Counter arguments defending immigration typically are concerned with the nature of these jobs, “jobs locals won’t do.”
On the other hand it’s obvious that large countries have more jobs and that countries with high immigration (and birthrates) grow their number of jobs roughly proportionally to population growth. I can think of no examples of massive immigration leading proportionally massive unemployment in the long term. Business cycles are far more easy to associate with unemployment and have very little to do with immigration.
Immigrants may compete with certain sectors and could plausibly cause price/salary decreases within that sector (eg agriculture, building) but that doesn’t add up to general unemployment. I imagine that immigration might lead to less optimal distribution of skill sets (organic population growth will be more incentivized to specialize as required by the market).
*I am particularly interested in the population growth aspect of immigration.
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