Trump is wrong about immigrants taking ‘Black jobs,’ economists say

(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump this week voiced an alarming claim about the alleged threat that immigrants pose to Black workers.

“Coming from the border are millions and millions of people who happen to be taking Black jobs,” Trump said at a gathering of the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago. “They’re taking the employment from Black people.”

Trump has delivered the same dire warning about an immigrant threat to Black employment on multiple occasions throughout the 2024 campaign, including at a debate with President Joe Biden in June.

Economists who spoke to ABC News dismissed the claim as false. In fact, they said, a tight job market in recent years delivered record-low Black unemployment and spurred rapid wage gains.

“The claim is absolutely not true,” Valerie Wilson, the director of a program on race, ethnicity and the economy at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute Action, told ABC News.

In a statement to ABC News, the Trump campaign claimed that undocumented immigrants pose a threat to Black employment.

“Illegal immigration disproportionally affects Black workers, including other minority workers, and we need to do everything to protect them from their jobs from being taken away,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said.

Cheung noted that the the current Black unemployment rate of 6.3% is higher than its lowest level under Trump of 5.3%. Inflation-adjusted weekly earnings for Black workers currently stand lower than they did at their high point under Trump, Cheung added.

“That is why President Trump has promised the largest deportation operation in American history since President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Kamala Harris will give amnesty and citizenship to all 15 million illegal aliens and make permanent the assault on Black American jobs,” Cheung added.

The all-time lowest figure for Black unemployment recorded in a single month registered at 4.8% in April 2023 during Biden’s term. Last year, the average Black unemployment rate stood at 5.5%, setting a record for the lowest figure over a calendar year, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows.

To be sure, the unemployment rate stood much higher than the 3.3% unemployment rate among white workers in 2023. Historically, the Black unemployment rate has clocked in roughly twice as high as that of white people, due in large part to continued racial discrimination among employers, economists previously told ABC News.

Another key metric has shown robust job gains among Black workers. Last year, the share of job holders between the ages of 25 to 54 — known as the “prime age” for workers — reached an all-time high of nearly 78% among Black people, the Economic Policy Institute found. That statistic helps correct for issues such as aging or higher education that can skew unemployment statistics.

“The bottom line is immigrants aren’t pushing out Black workers,” Christian Weller, a professor of public policy at the University of Massachusetts at Boston who studies racial disparities in employment, told ABC News.

“It isn’t particularly surprising,” Weller added. That’s because immigrants act not only as workers but also as consumers, helping fuel demand for goods and services, which in turn propels economic activity and drives up hiring, he said.

The economy has grown at a solid pace in recent years, defying fears among some observers of a potential slowdown. Gross domestic product expanded much faster than expected over three months ending in June, U.S. Commerce Department data last week showed.

In June, a budget outlook released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said immigration would account for a sizable share of U.S. economic growth over the coming decade. In all, the U.S. GDP will rise nearly $9 trillion higher than it would otherwise due to an anticipated influx of immigrants, the CBO found.

“At the heart of this question is not just that these are people who are filling jobs that need to be filled, but they are also paying taxes, raising their families, and spending in the neighborhoods and communist in which they live,” Michelle Holder, a labor economist at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told ABC News.

When speaking about the issue this week, Trump falsely characterized immigrants as a threat to “Black jobs.” That phrase “Black jobs,” which Trump used previously, drew condemnation from some economists.

Holder, who is also Black, said the term invokes a period of U.S. history that predates anti-discrimination laws, when some job listings explicitly described jobs as available only to Black applicants.

“I get a visceral reaction because there was a time in this country when there was work considered only suitable for Black people,” Holder said.

When asked about the phrase on Wednesday at the gathering of the National Association of Black Journalists, Trump said: “A Black job is anybody that has a job. That’s what it is.”

Wilson, of Economic Policy Institute Action, also criticized the phrase, in part because it fails to acknowledge the issue of “occupational segregation,” in which employers tend to place Black workers in low-wage positions rather than high-wage ones. The U.S., she added, has made progress in addressing that trend in recent years, though it remains an impediment for wage gains among Black workers.

“It’s just a very poor choice of words in terms of trying to say anything about the labor market, and it’s a poor choice of words in particular because it’s offensive,” said Wilson, who is Black.

“It totally ignores the facts about the current economy and the improvement that we’ve seen over the last four years,” Wilson added.