Consider This from NPR - Without immigrants, America's job growth would have stalled

Episode Date: September 25, 2024

The share of Americans who are in the workforce today is the highest it's been in decades. But it's still not enough to replace all the baby boomers who are aging out of the workforce. Which is why immigration has been so important for the economy.The businesses in Dayton, Ohio know this all-too-well.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

It was a shocking moment. In this month's debate with Vice President Harris, former President Donald Trump made the stunning claim that Haitian migrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. And this is what's happening in our country, and it's a shame. Vice Presidential candidate J.D. Vance has also repeated the false claims and even appeared to admit that they were lies on CNN's State of the Union. If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do, Dana, because you guys... Using dehumanizing language to describe immigrants is not new for either Trump or Vance. They've called immigrants animals and criminals and accused them of poisoning the blood of the country. This summer, in a moment more focused on policy than falsehoods, Vance quizzed Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell about why the U.S. had become so dependent on

foreign-born workers while sidelining U.S.-born workers. Rather than bringing in a large number of new immigrants, why not try to boost wages in a way that brings some of those workers off the sidelines? That seems to be a much better focus from my perspective. But the U.S. has been bringing workers off the sidelines, and wages have been going up. The share of Americans in the workforce today is the highest it's been in decades, But that is still not enough to replace all the baby boomers aging out of the workforce, which is why immigration has been so important for the economy. If we didn't have immigrants in this country, the workforce would actually be shrinking.

We would lose jobs every month and economic growth would be very low. When former White House economist Jason Furman wrote about that in the Wall Street Journal this summer, he got an earful. I got stronger feedback, both very strong positive and very strong negative to that column than most of what I write. Immigration is a hot button issue for a lot of people and one that adds fuel to the fire of political divisions. That is especially true when many of the newcomers arrive through unauthorized channels. There are a lot of considerations. The economy is not the only one. There's cultural considerations. There's rule of law. There's what type of country we want to have.

And, you know, it's important to have a discussion about all of these. But as part of that discussion, we have to understand what our economy would look like if we didn't have immigrants. Consider this. Republican politicians repeatedly argue that immigration hurts the U.S. economy. But the residents of Dayton, Ohio, have found just the opposite. From NPR, I'm Juana Summers. It's Consider This from NPR. Springfield, Ohio has gotten a lot of unwelcome attention in recent weeks over immigration. Just 30 minutes west of Springfield, though, the city of Dayton, Ohio, has a very different story to tell. For more than a decade, Dayton has been actively encouraging

immigrants to settle there to help fill vacant jobs and revitalize old neighborhoods. NPR's Scott Horsley traveled to Dayton and has this report. Beth Casella's family has been making things out of metal in Dayton for more than half a century. This is my grandfather and he founded this company and this is his old toolbox. He was a tool maker. Today, FC Industries has grown into an $85 million manufacturing business, making everything from high-tech centrifuges to lazy boy chair frames and auto exhaust pipes. We're growing. We keep breaking records month after month. Finding workers to maintain that growth hasn't been easy in a city with just 5% unemployment. One place Casella's been looking

is in Dayton's growing immigrant community. About 10% of the company's 300 plus employees are foreign born. Bilingual workers get paid extra, act as translators, and the company is setting up an English class. Casella says it's not altruism, just good business. We want good workers and we want people who can grow here and grow us to the next level. And we're open to looking wherever that could be. Nationwide, immigrants are vital to keeping the U.S. economy growing. Over the last 12 months, more than 1.5 million foreign-born workers have joined the labor force, legally or illegally, while the population of U.S.-born workers has shrunk.

It's not that immigrants are displacing Native workers. They're filling a hole created by retiring baby boomers. Were it not for these new arrivals, U.S. job growth likely would have stalled. And that's doubly true in places like Dayton, an aging industrial city that was losing people for decades. Our goal is to make Dayton a welcoming place for everybody, where everybody can grow up, everybody can get a good job, everybody can live happily. Matt Joseph is a Dayton City Commissioner

who helped launch an effort back in 2011 to make city services more accessible to immigrants and otherwise create a more inviting atmosphere. Joseph, who has business cards printed in Spanish, Mandarin, and Croatian, says there was some pushback, but not much. Most of the people that complained about it came from out of town, sometimes out of state. Like, they would drive hours to come to our meeting and complain about it, but native Daytonians didn't, which I was really proud of. In a survey last year, 57% of Dayton residents said they'd be happy to have an immigrant family next door. That was down from 70 percent three years ago.

City officials suspect hostile rhetoric from national politicians is partly to blame for the decrease. Some of the immigrants who settled in Dayton have started their own businesses, like Mo Ferdin Akhmadi. He moved here from Afghanistan, where he'd worked as a translator for the U.S. military. When he first arrived in Dayton 10 years ago, Akhmadi worked at Payless Shoes, then got a job as a truck driver. Eventually, he started his own trucking company with Afghan, Arab, Latino, and U.S.-born employees. I started with one truck. I have nine trucks now. I have a total of 10 drivers, and I have three dispatchers, and I have a guy working in my office too. Since the Taliban's takeover three years ago, more than 100 other Afghans have settled in Dayton.

Akhmadi calls it a second chance to rebuild their lives. Anita Zeghieh grew up in Rwanda and followed her sister to Dayton. After working for a time as a home health aide, she and her family opened up a market, selling East African groceries like smoked fish and flour made from cassava and yams. It's basically food from home. That's what is more important with our store. Zagiei pauses to ring up a customer who's buying some imported soda pop. This soda from my country, we call them fantasy plum, so they come direct from Rwanda, and my people love it. Yeah, I love it. Yes. Zagie says when she first got to Dayton, it was rare to see another African immigrant, but nowadays there's a sizable community, which supports her store and makes

it easier for newcomers to find their way around. The housing, they're affordable, apartment affordable, so that's why I think we have so many people in Dayton, Ohio. Even if the English may not be their first language, they still can find their job. Those same qualities, abundant jobs and a low cost of living, drew waves of European immigrants and black workers from the south to Dayton in the last century. Jennifer Evans is a Dayton native. My parents owned Evans Bakery right across the street. I grew up there, went to the local Catholic school here in the neighborhood.

Evans' husband, Matt Tepper, heads the Old North Dayton Neighborhood Association. He says the arrival of new immigrants has given a welcome boost to his aging community. Families were buying up those abandoned houses and fixing them up immediately, occupying them, so Old North Dayton doesn't have the, quote, abandonment problem that a lot of urban areas had. A group of ethnic Turks from Russia and Ukraine converted an old funeral home into a mosque. It shares a parking lot with the Polish social club next door. Luckily,

the growing crowd at Friday prayers typically clears out just as happy hour at the Social Club is getting underway. This friendly coexistence between new and old residents is a stark contrast with the ominous picture of immigrants that former President Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance like to paint. To be sure, many Americans would like to see changes made in national immigration policy. Jennifer Evans says she would too. But no matter how people got to Dayton, Evans tries to make them feel welcome and thinks most of her neighbors do too. I'd be lying if I said there was never anybody that said, I don't want all these new people in my neighborhood. I'm sure there are still some people here that would prefer it be the way it was 60 years ago, but it just isn't. For the most part, we're all working together to make us all stronger.

The city's welcome Dayton office has three full-time staffers who spend part of their time mediating between immigrants and long-time residents so small conflicts don't spiral into something bigger. Maybe someone's parking their car on the grass rather than the driveway, or drying their clothes on the bushes. Matt Tepper says a quiet conversation in the right language can make a big difference. Somebody calls me about, my neighbor just has trash everywhere, and they just didn't understand that the blue ones were for recyclables

and the green ones were for trash. So those problems disappear immediately. Foreign-born residents are still a smaller share of the population in Dayton and Ohio than they are nationwide. But Dayton's immigrant community has grown big enough to be noticeable. At Kaiser Elementary School, 40 percent of the students now speak a native language other than English. Instructions on the walls are printed in Spanish, Turkish, and the Central African language of Kinyarwanda. At a recent back-to-school night, parents browsed tables staffed by local service organizations, while kids munched on hot dogs and scrambled through inflatable bouncy houses.

City Commissioner Joseph acknowledges there are costs associated with the new arrivals, and he wishes his city had more control over things like work permits. On the whole, though, Joseph says Dayton has prospered by reaching out to immigrants rather than turning them away. This is the best the city's done in 50 years, since before I was born. And welcoming immigrants and welcoming everyone has played a role in that. It's an important reminder in a country where the economy increasingly depends on immigrants, even if politicians don't always welcome them. That was NPR's Scott Horsley reporting from Dayton, Ohio.

This episode was produced by Mark Rivers and Gurjeet Kaur, with audio engineering by Gilly Moon. It was edited by Jeanette Woods and Pallavi Gagoi. Our executive producer is Sammy Yannigan. And one more thing before we go. You can now enjoy the Consider This newsletter. We still help you break down a major story of the day, but you'll also get to know our producers and hosts and some moments of joy from the All Things Considered team.

You can sign up at npr.org slash consider this newsletter. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Juana Summers.