Latest news with #NicholasEberstadt
Miami Herald
10-06-2025
- Business
- Miami Herald
How the federal immigration raids could disrupt California's economy
President Trump promised a new "golden age" for America, but it's been anything but that for Los Angeles, with its dependence on trade and immigrant labor - two backbones of the region's economy. First, the president's tariffs cut deeply into traffic at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and now his push to arrest undocumented immigrants at work sites, which has spurred massive protests after Trump deployed the National Guard, threatens a one-two punch to a region just starting its recovery from January's firestorms. "The reality is that the U.S. economy is largely today dependent upon foreign born labor - and in California more so," said Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank in Washington. "For the country as a whole, we're getting towards 1 out of 5 jobs being filled currently by somebody who was born abroad. In California, it's more like 1 in 3." The crackdown, depending on its scope and scale, could come at a price for industries across Los Angeles and California that have become increasingly dependent on immigrants, here legally or not, economists say. The surge in international migration in the last two decades - both by legal and undocumented workers - has been key to the growth of California's economy. A number of industries such as construction, leisure and hospitality, health care and agriculture rely heavily on immigrant workers. Foreign-born Californians account for one-third of all workers at restaurants and warehouses; about 40% in home healthcare and child day care; almost 50% at trucking and lodging businesses; and 60% at services for landscaping and cleaning buildings, according to a Times analysis of 2022 Census Bureau data. Some of the most obvious effects will hit the construction industry, given that the protests began after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents targeted a Home Depot in Paramount, where casual workers seek employment. Dean Baker, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, said the raids will scare off casual workers from congregating in public places, making it more difficult for small contractors to find employees. "This will be a big problem. The question is when does it start to hit," he said. "If you need workers and they aren't there, that really holds up your site. It's going to raise costs. In some cases, projects won't be undertaken. There will be projects they don't bid on." That will raise costs as labor becomes scarce, while undocumented workers might go "underground" where they are less easily detectable, he said. Another sector federal agents have targeted is downtown L.A.'s apparel industry, where some 15,000 workers were employed in 2023 in the Los Angeles Fashion District, designing, making and selling clothes, according a report by prepared for the Los Angeles Fashion District Business Improvement District. On Friday agents took workers into custody at a warehouse operated by Ambiance Apparel, a Los Angeles maker, importer and wholesaler of casual apparel for women and juniors. "You have a lot of garment factories where they're dependent on a lot of immigrant workers," Baker said. "And I'm sure many of those people aren't documented. If these crackdowns continue, you'll see some of those people deported. It's a safe bet that if they didn't have access to the immigrant labor, they'd be out of business." The raids also come at a time when immigration is helping fill a demand for workers as the overall U.S. population ages and baby boomers retire. That's especially true in California because it has been losing many residents to other states, including, more recently, wealthier and higher-income people. California's population, which shrank early in the pandemic, gained 232,570 people from July 1, 2023, to July 1, 2024. Immigrants accounted for 361,057 of those gains, making up for an outflow of 239,375 resident to other states, according to calculations by Brookings demographer William Frey. Eberstadt said the idea that unemployed native-born Americans will somehow pick up the labor slack was given a dry run during the post-pandemic boom in 2022, when there were 12 million open jobs, including 800,000 unfilled in manufacturing - despite the availability of more than 6 million men ages 25 to 54 who had dropped out of the labor force. "It didn't bring a lot of those men on the couch back into the labor force," he said. Surveys have indicated about half of those men say that they're using pain medication daily. Many spend their day watching screens, he said: "How much of that is health? How much of that is pain? How much of that is psychic pain? It would be great if we had more reportage on this." In the longer term, there also may be a paradoxical effects on wages, especially in California, Texas and Florida, according to a forthcoming research paper in the American Economic Review titled "Immigration, Innovation and Growth." If all undocumented immigrants in the U.S. were deported, after five years, California would see average annual wages decrease by $970, with Florida seeing a decrease of $560, according to the paper. Texas would see a decrease of $187, according to the paper. The theory is that the more productive people you have in an economy, the more it grows, said Tarek Hassan, a professor of economics at Boston University. With immigrants filling jobs, it frees up others to invent, create new patents and figure out ways to make the economy more efficient, which generates wealth. "Immigration in general is good for economic growth," said Hassan, who is a co-author of the paper. "This idea that immigrants take away Americans' jobs is not correct." Meanwhile, the local economy already has taken a hit from the on-and-off tariffs Trump announced in April, with the Port of Los Angeles processing 25% less cargo than forecast for May, Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, said in an interview. That has resulted in dwindling job opportunities at the port, which along with the neighboring Port of Long Beach - the largest port complex in the country - provide jobs for thousands of dockworkers, heavy equipment operators and truck drivers. Nearly half of the longshoremen who support operations at the Los Angeles port went without work over the last two weeks. Over the last 25 work shifts, only 733 jobs were available for 1,575 longshoremen looking for work, he said. "They haven't been laid off, but they're not working nearly as much as they did previously," Seroka told The Los Angeles Times. "Since the tariffs went into place, and in May specifically, we've really seen the work go off on the downside," Seroka said. The decline in shipping has ripple effects on L.A.'s economy. A 2023 report found that the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach contributed $21.8 billion in direct revenue to local service providers, generating $2.7 billion in state and local taxes and creating 165,462 jobs, directly and indirectly. The slowdown in activity also has spread into surrounding communities. Businesses near the ports rely on a robust community of workers to frequent their establishments. "We're starting to hear from small businesses and restaurants in the harbor area that their customer patronage is trending downward," Seroka said. "Outside of COVID, this is the biggest drop I've seen in my career." Then there's the effect that deploying the National Guard and the turmoil it is having on the tourism industry, even though the disruptions have been limited to certain locales, said Jackie Filla, president of the Hotel Association of Los Angeles. "I'm hearing there have been just significant cancellations all across the city," Filla said, though she noted it's too soon to have hard data. "People are nervous to come to Los Angeles." International travelers also may be concerned about being detained, with Los Angeles clearly a target of the federal government for immigration enforcement actions, she said. And even if the immigration turmoil ends soon, the federal crackdown hurts L.A.'s brand as a tourist destination, which heavily leans on status as a global hub, with its diversity of cuisine, people and experiences, Filla said. "People rightfully have a lot of questions. They are calling hotels and wondering what the environment and atmosphere is like, and if they're going to be safe," she said. (Staff writers Suhauna Hussain and Caroline Petrow-Cohen contributed to this article.) Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Portions copyrighted by the respective providers.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
How the federal immigration raids could disrupt California's economy
President Trump promised a new "golden age" for America, but it's been anything but that for Los Angeles, with its dependence on trade and immigrant labor — two backbones of the region's economy. First, the president's tariffs cut deeply into traffic at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and now his push to arrest undocumented immigrants at work sites, which has spurred massive protests after Trump deployed the National Guard, threatens a one-two punch to a region just starting its recovery from January's firestorms. "The reality is that the U.S. economy is largely today dependent upon foreign born labor — and in California more so," said Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank in Washington. "For the country as a whole, we're getting towards 1 out of 5 jobs being filled currently by somebody who was born abroad. In California, it's more like 1 in 3." The crackdown, depending on its scope and scale, could come at a price for industries across Los Angeles and California that have become increasingly dependent on immigrants, here legally or not, economists say. The surge in international migration in the last two decades — both by legal and undocumented workers — has been key to the growth of California's economy. A number of industries such as construction, leisure and hospitality, health care and agriculture rely heavily on immigrant workers. Read more: Home Depot caught in the crosshairs of L.A. immigrations raids Foreign-born Californians account for one-third of all workers at restaurants and warehouses; about 40% in home healthcare and child day care; almost 50% at trucking and lodging businesses; and 60% at services for landscaping and cleaning buildings, according to a Times analysis of 2022 Census Bureau data. Some of the most obvious effects will hit the construction industry, given that the protests began after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents targeted a Home Depot in Paramount, where casual workers seek employment. Dean Baker, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, said the raids will scare off casual workers from congregating in public places, making it more difficult for small contractors to find employees. "This will be a big problem. The question is when does it start to hit," he said. "If you need workers and they aren't there, that really holds up your site. It's going to raise costs. In some cases, projects won't be undertaken. There will be projects they don't bid on." That will raise costs as labor becomes scarce, while undocumented workers might go "underground" where they are less easily detectable, he said. Another sector federal agents have targeted is downtown L.A.'s apparel industry, where some 15,000 workers were employed in 2023 in the Los Angeles Fashion District, designing, making and selling clothes, according a report by prepared for the Los Angeles Fashion District Business Improvement District. On Friday agents took workers into custody at a warehouse operated by Ambiance Apparel, a Los Angeles maker, importer and wholesaler of casual apparel for women and juniors. "You have a lot of garment factories where they're dependent on a lot of immigrant workers," Baker said. "And I'm sure many of those people aren't documented. If these crackdowns continue, you'll see some of those people deported. It's a safe bet that if they didn't have access to the immigrant labor, they'd be out of business." The raids also come at a time when immigration is helping fill a demand for workers as the overall U.S. population ages and baby boomers retire. That's especially true in California because it has been losing many residents to other states, including, more recently, wealthier and higher-income people. California's population, which shrank early in the pandemic, gained 232,570 people from July 1, 2023, to July 1, 2024. Immigrants accounted for 361,057 of those gains, making up for an outflow of 239,375 resident to other states, according to calculations by Brookings demographer William Frey. Eberstadt said the idea that unemployed native-born Americans will somehow pick up the labor slack was given a dry run during the post-pandemic boom in 2022, when there were 12 million open jobs, including 800,000 unfilled in manufacturing — despite the availability of more than 6 million men ages 25 to 54 who had dropped out of the labor force. "It didn't bring a lot of those men on the couch back into the labor force," he said. Surveys have indicated about half of those men say that they're using pain medication daily, with some help other people or around the house. Many spend their day watching screens, he said: "How much of that is health? How much of that is pain? How much of that is psychic pain? It would be great if we had more reportage on this." Read more: Why California's surge in immigration is lifting our economy In the longer term, there also may be a paradoxical effects on wages, especially in California, Texas and Florida, according to a forthcoming research paper in the American Economic Review titled "Immigration, Innovation and Growth." If all undocumented immigrants in the U.S. were deported, after five years, California would see average annual wages decrease by $970, with Florida seeing a decrease of $560, according to the paper. Texas would see a decrease of $187, according to the paper. The theory is that the more productive people you have in an economy, the more it grows, said Tarek Hassan, a professor of economics at Boston University. With immigrants filling jobs, it frees up others to invent, create new patents and figure out ways to make the economy more efficient, which generates wealth. "Immigration in general is good for economic growth," said Hassan, who is a co-author of the paper. "This idea that immigrants take away Americans' jobs is not correct." Read more: Fear and loathing grip L.A. hotels as Trump deportation threats loom Meanwhile, the local economy already has taken a hit from the on-and-off tariffs Trump announced in April, with the Port of Los Angeles processing 25% less cargo than forecast for May, Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, said in an interview. That has resulted in dwindling job opportunities at the port, which along with the neighboring Port of Long Beach — the largest port complex in the country — provide jobs for thousands of dockworkers, heavy equipment operators and truck drivers. Nearly half of the longshoremen who support operations at the Los Angeles port went without work over the last two weeks. Over the last 25 work shifts, only 733 jobs were available for 1,575 longshoremen looking for work, he said. 'They haven't been laid off, but they're not working nearly as much as they did previously,' Seroka told The Times. 'Since the tariffs went into place, and in May specifically, we've really seen the work go off on the downside,' Seroka said. The decline in shipping has ripple effects on L.A.'s economy. A 2023 report found that the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach contributed $21.8 billion in direct revenue to local service providers, generating $2.7 billion in state and local taxes and creating 165,462 jobs, directly and indirectly. The slowdown in activity also has spread into surrounding communities. Businesses near the ports rely on a robust community of workers to frequent their establishments. 'We're starting to hear from small businesses and restaurants in the harbor area that their customer patronage is trending downward,' Seroka said. 'Outside of COVID, this is the biggest drop I've seen in my career.' Then there's the effect that deploying the National Guard and the turmoil it is having on the tourism industry, even though the disruptions have been limited to certain locales, said Jackie Filla, president of the Hotel Assn. of Los Angeles. 'I'm hearing there have been just significant cancellations all across the city," Filla said, though she noted it's too soon to have hard data. 'People are nervous to come to Los Angeles.' International travelers also may be concerned about being detained, with Los Angeles clearly a target of the federal government for immigration enforcement actions, she said. And even if the immigration turmoil ends soon, the federal crackdown hurts L.A.'s brand as a tourist destination, which heavily leans on status as a global hub, with its diversity of cuisine, people and experiences, Filla said. 'People rightfully have a lot of questions. They are calling hotels and wondering what the environment and atmosphere is like, and if they're going to be safe,' she said. Time staff writers Suhauna Hussain and Caroline Petrow-Cohen contributed to this article. Sign up for our Wide Shot newsletter to get the latest entertainment business news, analysis and insights. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
10-06-2025
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
How the federal immigration raids could disrupt California's economy
President Trump promised a new 'golden age' for America, but it's been anything but that for Los Angeles, with its dependence on trade and immigrant labor — two backbones of the region's economy. First, the president's tariffs cut deeply into traffic at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and now his push to arrest undocumented immigrants at work sites, which has spurred massive protests after Trump deployed the National Guard, threatens a one-two punch to a region just starting its recovery from January's firestorms. 'The reality is that the U.S. economy is largely today dependent upon foreign born labor — and in California more so,' said Nicholas Eberstadt, a political economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank in Washington. 'For the country as a whole, we're getting towards 1 out of 5 jobs being filled currently by somebody who was born abroad. In California, it's more like 1 in 3.' The crackdown, depending on its scope and scale, could come at a price for industries across Los Angeles and California that have become increasingly dependent on immigrants, here legally or not, economists say. The surge in international migration in the last two decades — both by legal and undocumented workers — has been key to the growth of California's economy. A number of industries such as construction, leisure and hospitality, health care and agriculture rely heavily on immigrant workers. Foreign-born Californians account for one-third of all workers at restaurants and warehouses; about 40% in home healthcare and child day care; almost 50% at trucking and lodging businesses; and 60% at services for landscaping and cleaning buildings, according to a Times analysis of 2022 Census Bureau data. Some of the most obvious effects will hit the construction industry, given that the protests began after Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents targeted a Home Depot in Paramount, where casual workers seek employment. Dean Baker, a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, said the raids will scare off casual workers from congregating in public places, making it more difficult for small contractors to find employees. 'This will be a big problem. The question is when does it start to hit,' he said. 'If you need workers and they aren't there, that really holds up your site. It's going to raise costs. In some cases, projects won't be undertaken. There will be projects they don't bid on.' That will raise costs as labor becomes scarce, while undocumented workers might go 'underground' where they are less easily detectable, he said. Another sector federal agents have targeted is downtown L.A.'s apparel industry, where some 15,000 workers were employed in 2023 in the Los Angeles Fashion District, designing, making and selling clothes, according a report by prepared for the Los Angeles Fashion District Business Improvement District. On Friday agents took workers into custody at a warehouse operated by Ambiance Apparel, a Los Angeles maker, importer and wholesaler of casual apparel for women and juniors. 'You have a lot of garment factories where they're dependent on a lot of immigrant workers,' Baker said. 'And I'm sure many of those people aren't documented. If these crackdowns continue, you'll see some of those people deported. It's a safe bet that if they didn't have access to the immigrant labor, they'd be out of business.' The raids also come at a time when immigration is helping fill a demand for workers as the overall U.S. population ages and baby boomers retire. That's especially true in California because it has been losing many residents to other states, including, more recently, wealthier and higher-income people. California's population, which shrank early in the pandemic, gained 232,570 people from July 1, 2023, to July 1, 2024. Immigrants accounted for 361,057 of those gains, making up for an outflow of 239,375 resident to other states, according to calculations by Brookings demographer William Frey. Eberstadt said the idea that unemployed native-born Americans will somehow pick up the labor slack was given a dry run during the post-pandemic boom in 2022, when there were 12 million open jobs, including 800,000 unfilled in manufacturing — despite the availability of more than 6 million men ages 25 to 54 who had dropped out of the labor force. 'It didn't bring a lot of those men on the couch back into the labor force,' he said. Surveys have indicated about half of those men say that they're using pain medication daily, with some help other people or around the house. Many spend their day watching screens, he said: 'How much of that is health? How much of that is pain? How much of that is psychic pain? It would be great if we had more reportage on this.' In the longer term, there also may be a paradoxical effects on wages, especially in California, Texas and Florida, according to a forthcoming research paper in the American Economic Review titled 'Immigration, Innovation and Growth.' If all undocumented immigrants in the U.S. were deported, after five years, California would see average annual wages decrease by $970, with Florida seeing a decrease of $560, according to the paper. Texas would see a decrease of $187, according to the paper. The theory is that the more productive people you have in an economy, the more it grows, said Tarek Hassan, a professor of economics at Boston University. With immigrants filling jobs, it frees up others to invent, create new patents and figure out ways to make the economy more efficient, which generates wealth. 'Immigration in general is good for economic growth,' said Hassan, who is a co-author of the paper. 'This idea that immigrants take away Americans' jobs is not correct.' Meanwhile, the local economy already has taken a hit from the on-and-off tariffs Trump announced in April, with the Port of Los Angeles processing 25% less cargo than forecast for May, Gene Seroka, executive director of the Port of Los Angeles, said in an interview. That has resulted in dwindling job opportunities at the port, which along with the neighboring Port of Long Beach — the largest port complex in the country — provide jobs for thousands of dockworkers, heavy equipment operators and truck drivers. Nearly half of the longshoremen who support operations at the Los Angeles port went without work over the last two weeks. Over the last 25 work shifts, only 733 jobs were available for 1,575 longshoremen looking for work, he said. 'They haven't been laid off, but they're not working nearly as much as they did previously,' Seroka told The Times. 'Since the tariffs went into place, and in May specifically, we've really seen the work go off on the downside,' Seroka said. The decline in shipping has ripple effects on L.A.'s economy. A 2023 report found that the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach contributed $21.8 billion in direct revenue to local service providers, generating $2.7 billion in state and local taxes and creating 165,462 jobs, directly and indirectly. The slowdown in activity also has spread into surrounding communities. Businesses near the ports rely on a robust community of workers to frequent their establishments. 'We're starting to hear from small businesses and restaurants in the harbor area that their customer patronage is trending downward,' Seroka said. 'Outside of COVID, this is the biggest drop I've seen in my career.' Then there's the effect that deploying the National Guard and the turmoil it is having on the tourism industry, even though the disruptions have been limited to certain locales, said Jackie Filla, president of the Hotel Assn. of Los Angeles. 'I'm hearing there have been just significant cancellations all across the city,' Filla said, though she noted it's too soon to have hard data. 'People are nervous to come to Los Angeles.' International travelers also may be concerned about being detained, with Los Angeles clearly a target of the federal government for immigration enforcement actions, she said. And even if the immigration turmoil ends soon, the federal crackdown hurts L.A.'s brand as a tourist destination, which heavily leans on status as a global hub, with its diversity of cuisine, people and experiences, Filla said. 'People rightfully have a lot of questions. They are calling hotels and wondering what the environment and atmosphere is like, and if they're going to be safe,' she said. Time staff writers Suhauna Hussain and Caroline Petrow-Cohen contributed to this article.
Korea Herald
04-05-2025
- Business
- Korea Herald
Underprepared for a new world order created by a 'jaw dropping' collapse of procreative power
SINGAPORE, May 4, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Policy makers around the world are not ready for a new demographic order of global depopulation and how it will recast societies, economies and power politics. With birth rates plummeting globally, countries face a future of shrinking and ageing societies driven by an unrelenting collapse in fertility. Family structures and living arrangements previously imaged only in science fiction will become commonplace features of everyday life with an unprecedented collapse of procreative power. These stark warnings of an era of pervasive depopulation were delivered at the 2025 Congress of the Asia Pacific Initiative on Reproduction (ASPIRE) in Singapore today. Internationally respected political economist, Dr Nicholas Eberstadt, is supporting an ASPIRE campaign advocating for policy changes that will encourage family building, particularly in the Asia Pacific region. Dr Eberstadt is the Henry Wendt Chair in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute where he is renowned for his demographic research and studies on international security. He is also a senior advisor to the National Bureau of Asian Research. He told the ASPIRE Congress that between 1965 and 2015 the human fertility rate in births per woman fell by half and the "record breaking, jaw dropping" plunge has quickened in recent years in rich and poor countries alike. Dr Eberstadt said by 2023 fertility levels were 40 per cent below replacement levels in Japan, 50 per cent in mainland China, 60 per cent in Taiwan and 65 per cent in South Korea. Sub-replacement trends are also evident in countries including Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia. "Labour forces will shrink all around the world due to the spread of sub-replacement birth rates with the old beginning to outnumber the young," Dr Eberstadt explained. "Societies will have to adjust their expectations to comport with the new realities of fewer workers, savers, taxpayers, renters, home buyers, entrepreneurs, innovators, inventors, consumers and voters. "Dwindling workforces, reduced savings and investment, and unsustainable social outlays and budget deficits are all on the cards for today's developed countries without sweeping changes in immigration, lifecycle earning and consumption patterns, and government policies for taxation and social expenditures. "Super-elders of 80-plus years of age are the world's fastest growing cohort. By 2050, there will be more of them than children in some countries. The burden of caring for people with dementia will pose growing costs – human, social, economic – in an aging and shrinking world." Dr Eberstadt said as families and societies assume new structures under long-term population decline, the challenge will be to develop new habits of mind, conventions and cooperative objectives. "Policymakers will have to learn new rules for development in the midst of depopulation," he explained. "Investors, likewise, will need new playbooks to profit from an altered environment of opportunity and risk. "There will be less margin for error for investment projects, be they public or private, and no rising tide of demand from a growing pool of consumers or taxpayers to count on. "Prosperity in a depopulating world will also depend on open economics, free trade in goods, services and finance to counter the constraints that shrinking populations impose. As the hunt for scarce talent becomes more acute, the movement of people will take on new economic salience and immigration will matter more than in does today." ASPIRE President, Dr Clare Boothroyd, said in response to the disturbing fall in fertility rates, a new ASPIRE special interest group would be created to harness expertise in population sustainability. She will co-Chair the group with acclaimed reproductive endocrinologist, Professor Dominique de Ziegler from Foch Hospital in Paris. "Humanity is entering uncharted territory in the phenomenon of depopulation, and it is a challenge that must be embraced by governments, industry, the education sector and the public to push for family friendly policies that encourage family planning," Dr Boothroyd said. The ASPIRE Congress at the Suntec Convention and Exhibition Centre in Singapore has attracted more than 2,000 leaders from various disciplines in assisted reproduction to address latest advances and knowledge in fertility health.
