Here are six key facts that show immigrants are not hurting the employment outcomes of U.S.-born workers.


The unemployment rate for U.S.-born workers averaged 3.6% in 2023, the lowest rate on record. Obviously, immigration is not causing high unemployment among U.S.-born workers.

The share of prime-age U.S.-born individuals with a job is at its highest rate in more than two decades. In 2023, the prime-age (ages 25–54) employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) for U.S.-born individuals was 81.4%, up from 80.7% in 2019 and now at its highest rate since 2001.2, 3

The prime-age labor force participation rate (LFPR) for U.S.-born individuals is also at its highest rate in more than two decades. In 2023, the LFPR for prime-age U.S.-born individuals was 83.9%, up from 83.3% in 2019 and now at its highest rate since 2002. Further, the increase in the U.S.-born prime-age LFPR over the last year was the second highest on record—below only the increase that occurred the year before last.4, 5

The prime-age LFPR of U.S.-born men without a bachelor’s degree grew at a record pace in each of the last two years and is above its pre-COVID trend. We focus here on prime-age men without a bachelor’s degree because though the immigrant population is comprised of men and women of all education levels, immigrants are somewhat disproportionately concentrated among men without a college degree (in 2023, the immigrant share of the overall labor force was 18.6%, but it was 20.0% of men without a college degree). That means that if recent immigration were affecting labor market outcomes of U.S.-born workers, it would be more easily detected among workers in this group. However, the LFPR of these workers is also beating expectations. It is clear the labor market is both absorbing immigrants and generating strong job opportunities for U.S.-born workers, including those in demographic groups potentially most impacted by immigration. 6, 7

It was a missed opportunity for Carlson, who now heads his own startup. But analysts say Putin missed a rare chance to wade convincingly into foreign-policy debates in the U.S., just as the Senate considers additional aid crucial for Ukraine to maintain its defense against the Russian onslaught.

“The Kremlin had got what it wanted: a two-hour platform for Putin to communicate his ideas to the West,” said Maria Snegovaya, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “But the propaganda effect was not as strong as the Kremlin intended, because most people will stop listening.”

Key elements from the interview are surfacing in abbreviated form, including Putin’s suggestion that the U.S. should end its support for Ukraine and whether he would consider a prisoner exchange for the freedom of the jailed Wall Street Journal reporter, Evan Gershkovich.

But Putin allotted large chunks of the two-hour interview, aired on Thursday evening on Carlson’s new website, to justify Russia’s historical claim to Ukraine, meandering back to the ninth century at times. Only briefly did he address the partisan fights in the U.S., where Republicans are blocking further aid over border policy disputes.

“Do the United States need this? What for? Thousands of miles away from your national territory! Don’t you have anything better to do?” Putin said about the billions of dollars in military and financial aid the U.S. has given, urging negotiations with Moscow over Ukraine’s fate. “You have issues on the border, issues with migration, issues with the national debt.”

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The first time Elias voted, it was 2016, when he reported to an elementary school polling place near his college campus. He was proud to cast his vote and perform what he saw then as his civic duty. For the upcoming election, however, Elias says he isn’t going to cast a vote for president, partly to send a message to Democrats, who he believes don’t take their voters’ preferences into account. “I think power is a language that they understand, and by refusing to put them into power, we’re forcing them to listen to us,” he explains. “They can’t… plug their ears and turn their heads away.”

Elias, who is Palestinian American, has a laundry list of issues with the current administration that have pushed him to this point, including sales of new oil and gas leases and Biden’s support of Israel. For Elias, the deciding moment came when Biden cast doubt on the Gaza Health Ministry’s reported death tolls. “I just found that to be truly monstrous,” he says. “It’s something I cannot cosign with my name and my vote.”

While some Gen Z voters say they are choosing to abstain from voting because of Biden’s support for Israel and their own support for Palestine, it’s worth noting that the Republican Party has become strongly pro-Israel in recent years. If voters spurn Biden for being pro-Israel, will they unintentionally hand the presidency to someone who may be less sympathetic to Palestinians?

For Elias, the answer to this hypothetical question depends on expectations. “We don’t have any illusions about who the Republican Party is or what they stand for. We know they’re dangerous for our communities,” he says. “The logic of not voting for Joe Biden in 2024 is that the Democratic Party is supposed to be accountable to young people and diverse communities.”

Zach, a political science major from Florida, views the act of voting as unequivocally important. But the same can’t be said for some of his friends, he tells Teen Vogue, who feel like their vote doesn’t matter. Part of that narrative is the fact that Florida, which used to be considered a swing state, has given its Electoral College votes to a Republican candidate in every election cycle since 2000, other than Obama’s wins in 2008 and 2012. When Zach talks to some of his friends about voting, they say it’s a waste of time because they feel like the winner has already been decided.

So where does that leave Zach? “It makes me feel sad because I remember, especially in the 2022 midterms, people were saying the younger generation saved democracy,” he says. “And now… maybe [young voters] can protect democracy in 2024? I see [people choosing not to vote] as crazy. Why do you not want to vote?”

. . . Shrock surveilles the crowd while his wife, Dawn, cares for six of their 11 children on the opposite end of a sidewalk crowded with warring abortion messages. One of their daughters walks over, and Shrock explains she will wed soon. He’s been praying God will give her 20 children. (For privacy reasons, he doesn’t share her age.) One of his sons got married about six years ago at 18 and has had a child every year since. Shrock says with pride that Dawn, who wears a hair covering and a long dress, has never held a public job.

“God created a woman, not only to have a baby and a baby to grow inside of her, but to nurture a baby,” says Shrock, who is not a spokesperson or leader for the group. “I could never have the closeness to my children that my wife has. That’s because God created her that way. He created her different from me. And I know that goes against some of today’s norms. ‘We’re all the same’— that’s not what my Bible says.”

. . .

But even beyond the militant corner of the anti-abortion movement lies a male-dominated network of academics, attorneys, judges, lawmakers and lobbyists working on legal arguments that position fertilized eggs as constitutionally protected persons. And now that federal abortion rights no longer exist, these men are able to say the quiet part out loud: that somewhere between conception and the first few weeks of pregnancy, the rights of the zygote, embryo, or fetus trump those of the pregnant person.

South Carolina Supreme Court Justice John Kittredge recently argued as much in his opinion upholding the state’s so-called “heartbeat” ban, which was approved by the majority on what recently became the only all-male state supreme court in the nation.

. . .

What if she wants to climb the corporate ladder?’ Well, God created my wife to have babies, to — literally what it says in Titus.”

Operation Save America’s pervading message is about empowering men and boys to adopt an old, punitive Christian worldview, one more widely embraced when women had few rights and power.

Sen. Jacob Howard of Michigan, who led the Republicans in debate, insisted that it wouldn't be enough to deprive the former confederates of their right to vote in federal elections -- he wanted them banished from government service altogether.

"I should prefer a clause prohibiting all persons who have participated in the rebellion, and who were over twenty-five years of age at the breaking out of the rebellion, from all participation in offices, either Federal or State, throughout the United States," Howard said on the Senate floor on May 23, 1866. "I think such a provision would be a benefit to the nation."

After about a week of discussions with colleagues, Howard offered the Sec. 3 language that was ultimately ratified. Howard's revision removed specific references to "the" rebellion and added an important qualifier: those who were to be excluded from government service would have to have violated prior oaths to defend the constitution by having "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against it or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."

In 2024, the originalists on the Supreme Court will likely seek to determine whether the ratifiers could have had it in mind 158 years ago that Sec. 3 might not only be applied to the "late insurrection," as the House-passed version originally had it, but also to any other rebellion that might later take place.

But originalists might take note of what Sen. Peter Van Winkle of West Virginia said as he sought to have the threshold for congressional amnesty in Howard's version lowered to a simple majority, rather than two-thirds.

"This is to go into our Constitution and to stand to govern future insurrection as well as the present; and I should like to have that point definitely understood," Van Winkle said at the time.

It's also worth noting that there was just a single reference in the Senate debate to the fact that the president and vice president were not explicitly mentioned in Howard's draft as "officer(s) of the United States," the way members of Congress and state officials had been itemized in the text. Would the disqualification clause of the amendment not cover the top posts in the executive branch?

"Why did you omit to exclude them?" asked Maryland Democratic Sen. Reverdy Johnson.

Maine's Lot Morrill jumped in to clarify.

"Let me call the Senator's attention to the words 'or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States,'" Morrill said, ending the discussion on that point.

Nationally, about 85,000 people are getting PrEP through community health centers, Schmid said.

“Unfortunately, the Republicans in the Congress on the House side have zeroed out that program,” Schmid said. “The Senate has that funding for it, it’s $147 million. But they zeroed out all the Ending the HIV Epidemic funding that impacts North Carolina and 57 jurisdictions. The Senate is actually keeping that money, but, you know, we are facing the possibility of it going away.”

Earlier this month, health care advocates helped defeat an amendment to eliminate the Minority AIDS Initiative, by a vote 109 to 324.

“And so that shows even with Republicans the majority, a majority of the Congress does not support these cuts,” Schmid said. “But that’s what we’re facing right now.”

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If you want to understand where American capitalism is now and what you might do to help move it in a more humane direction, you need to look under the hood.

First, forget politics as you’ve come to see it as electoral contests between Democrats and Republicans. Think power. The underlying contest is between a small minority who are gaining power over the system and the vast majority who have little or none.

Next, forget what you may have learned about the choice between the “free market” and government. A market cannot exist without a government to organize and enforce it. The important question is whom the market has been organized to serve.

Forget the standard economic goals of higher growth and greater efficiency. The issue is who benefits from more growth and efficiency.

Don’t be dazzled by “corporate social responsibility.” Most of it is public relations. Corporations won’t voluntarily sacrifice shareholder returns unless laws require them to. . .