"The president does not seem to have given any consideration to the abysmal employment picture for less-educated Americans."
President Obama's executive amnesty statement Thursday night brought its fair share of criticism because of its ability to grant 5 million illegal aliens the right to stay in this country, but a deeper look shows that the president's decision may impact the job market.
A Center For Immigration Studies (CIS) brief released Friday says that the president's decisions lately have already had an effect on the job market and will continue to have an effect on the job market after his decision.
"The president does not seem to have given any consideration to the abysmal employment picture for less-educated Americans, people who will now face increased competition for the dwindling number of relatively well-paying jobs that are available to them," said Steven Camarota, Director of Research at CIS.
Numbers released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for the third quarter of 2014 show some pretty stark statistics about unemployment for those who are less well-off:
- Only 45 percent of adult American citizens (native-born and naturalized), aged 18-65 and without a high school education are working.
- Only 32 percent of African Americans aged 18 to 65 and without a high school education are working, as are only 56 percent with only a high school education.
In total, 27 million adult American citizens aged 18-65 with nothing more than a high school education were out of work in the third quarter of 2014.
Camarota said in an exclusive interview with MRCTV that most illegal immigrants would not be competing for jobs that most Americans with a college education or higher would take, because they are more likely to be less educated and are "largely unable" to move into mainstream jobs.
"In general, illegal immigrants have a 10-11th grade education on average- it's not college-educated Americans that are hurting but Americans with only a high school education," said Camarota.
President Obama, however, thinks that because the numbers are improving on a broader scale- his executive amnesty plan is working.
"The good news is today we saw another good set of jobs numbers," Obama said. "We now have 56 consecutive months of job growth. More than 10.6 million jobs have been created and the unemployment rate is now down to 5.8 percent."
Basically, the government's numbers only show part of the broader picture- there's a lot more to government numbers than meets the eye.