WSJ What’s News - What the Immigration Slowdown Means for the U.S. Labor Market

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

P.M. Edition for Aug. 25. This year, net immigration to the U.S. could be negative for the first time in decades, some experts predict. WSJ reporter Paul Kiernan discusses what impact that might have on the country’s job market—and the economy overall—in the short and long term. Plus, some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley have created a network of super-PACs to advocate against AI regulations ahead of next year’s midterms. WSJ tech policy reporter Amrith Ramkumar tells us what that means about tech’s changing relationship with politics. And, at a time when many retailers are exiting American malls, Dillard’s is buying one. Journal reporter Kate King joins to talk about the company’s motivations. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today's market, one of the most precious commodities you can add to your portfolio, is certainty, the kind you get with a multi-year guarantee annuity from American National Insurance Company. Your money grows at a steady rate, guaranteed, no hidden fees, no market risk, no surprises. Just a bedrock of certainty you can depend on to be there when you need it most. You can get more details and fund an annuity online at annuities.americanational.com. You got this. Silicon Valley is launching pro-AI super PACs to defend the industry in the midterm elections. Plus, what a historic slowdown in immigration means for the U.S. job market.

A lot of these people are massively overrepresented in the workforces of certain industries. And so you stem that inflow, you could start to seek acute shortages and workers in some industries. And why Dillard's bottom mall, when most department stores, are ditching them. It's Monday, August 25th. I'm Alex Ocelove for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. We're exclusively reporting that Silicon Valley is putting more than $100 million into a network of political action committees and organizations. The network is called Leading the Future, and its goal is to advocate against strict artificial intelligence regulations.

For more, I'm joined now by WSJ Tech Policy Reporter, Amrith Ramkumar. Amrith, what do we know about this super PAC and who's involved in it? Some of the biggest names in tech world are involved in Driesen Horowitz, a huge venture capital firm that backs a bunch of AI and crypto startups. Greg Brockman, who's one of the founders of OpenAI and one of their top executives, angel investor Ron Conway, who's a legend. in Silicon Valley, but maybe not super well known in other circles, the AI search engine perplexity, and Joe Wonsdale, who's a very influential in tech world. He was a co-founder of Palantir, who now

runs a VC firm. Those are just some of the names. There will probably be more that come out in the coming months. And it's just a big signal that Silicon Valley is getting off the sidelines and wanting to advocate for AI policy, which is sort of a blank canvas. And it's also a sign they're looking ahead to next year's midterm elections as well. What are they really going for? What is the sort of unifying philosophy here? The unifying philosophy for this group is light-touch AI regulation. They're very careful to say that they don't want total deregulation. They're okay with some rules of the road.

But they're very worried about a group of people they call AI doomers that want to impose really strict guardrails and limitations on what you have to do if you operate a top AI model. I would say that's the unifying force. It's like opposing those types of stringent regulations. and guardrails. And that other side has a well-funded group of tech people as well who have been putting money into it. We're already in the lead up to next year's midterms. So what does the creation of this super PAC show us about Silicon Valley's relationship with politics? It just shows that AI policies are coming quickly. There have been over a thousand bills proposed

at the state level that have some tie to AI. A lot of those aren't being taken super seriously. Again, the trend is happening and it's accelerating quickly, and it is this combination of getting ready for the midterms, but also wanting to help shape these policy discussions that are going to be happening. And it is worth noting they generally seem to be aligning with White House AI and Cryptozar, David Sachs. So again, it is part of this bigger picture back and forth. So we might see some responses from the other side now, too, that there's this well-funded group out there. That was WSJ reporter. Amrith Ramkumar. Thanks, Amrith. Thanks for having me.

Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup XAI filed a lawsuit today against Apple and OpenAI, alleging that they're illegally thwarting competition for AI companies. The suit says that Apple's partnership with OpenAI makes the startup's chat GPT the only chatbot to be able to improve its model based on data from hundreds of millions of iPhones. The suit also says Apple is deprioritizing the apps of competing chatbots in its App Store rankings. An Apple spokesman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Apple has previously said the app store is designed to be free of bias and the company has defended the fairness of its partnership with OpenAI.

An OpenAI spokesman said that the suit is a continuation of Musk's, quote, ongoing pattern of harassment. Musk has separately sued OpenAI to try to prevent it from converting into a for-profit company. Major U.S. indexes were lower today, dimming a bit of the afterglow of Friday's market rally. The Dow led the losses, falling by about 0.8%. The S&P 500 dropped about 0.4%, and the NASDAQ slipped about 0.2%. Today, President Trump said that the administration's deal with chipmaker Intel is a new way of doing industrial policy and signal that more agreements could be ahead. Last week, the government made a deal with Intel in which it agreed to convert nearly $9 billion in grants into a 10% state,

in the company. An administration official told the Wall Street Journal last week that big chip companies like TSM and Micron, receiving funds from the 2022 Chips Act, won't have to give up equity because they're investing more in the U.S. Smaller companies may be asked to let the government become a shareholder. Skeptics say these kinds of agreements represent the administration's excessive intervention in the private sector. Big department store chains from JCPenney to Macy's are unloading their properties as fast as they can. Meanwhile, Dillers is buying real estate. This month, the department store chain and a partner purchased the Longview Mall in Texas,

about two hours east of Dallas for about $34 million. WSJ real estate reporter Kate King joins me now with more. Kate, why did Dillard's buy this mall? First and foremost, the price was right. The values of malls, especially older malls that haven't had a lot of renovations or other upgrades to them in many years, has fallen pretty dramatically in recent years. So at $34 million, it was kind of a bargain. And also this mall, the Longview Mall, is a longtime favorite of Dillard's chief executive, Bill Dillard. They wanted to make sure that the new owner of this mall, where they have a store, was operated and owned by an owner who would really invest in the property. There are some owners out there who have been buying malls in recent years and really not upgrading the properties, letting things like parking lot sinkholes, utility bills, other types of maintenance and basic infrastructure issues go unaddressed. And this has been a real source of stress for first and foremost the cities where those malls are located, but also the retailers who operate in these malls and feel that the shopping experience has deteriorated there. Yeah, let's use this as kind of an opportunity to. check in on the state of the mall industry. What you're describing seems pretty grim, but

is that the common state of a mall in the U.S. these days? Well, the mall industry is bifurcated in a way. What we consider the top malls in the country are doing really well. And so there's really no concern about the future of those malls. But what we've seen in recent years is that even the kind of what we refer to as class B malls are doing quite well and seem to have staying power. Longview Mall would probably fit into this category. going back to Dillard's for a second, is buying malls a part of the company's strategy now? Dillard's declined to comment on whether it's going to be buying more real estate moving forward. Department stores really stopped being involved in the building or owning of malls.

According to one real estate consultant that I spoke with for the story, it's been about 30 years since a department store has been involved in the development or ownership of a mall. That was WSJ reporter, Kate King. Thank you, Kate. Thank you. Coming up, as immigration into the U.S. drops to its lowest rate in decades, does the economy stand to benefit or suffer? More on that after the break. D.C. politicians want to enact harmful credit card mandates that could take away your cashback and rewards points.

Perks that stretch your budget and make life a little easier. Losing these benefits means less money for money. for your family's everyday essentials, like gas and groceries. The perks you rely on could disappear, leaving you with higher costs and fewer options. Tell Congress to guard your card and oppose the Durban Marshall Credit Card mandates. Paid for by Electronic Payments Coalition. To hear Fed Chair Jerome Powell tell it, the U.S. labor market has entered a curious balance. The demand for workers has cooled, yet the unemployment rate has held steady because the

supply of labor has slowed abruptly. Behind that slowing in the labor supply is a dramatic swing in immigration from one of the biggest waves in U.S. history to almost none. Economists say that could have a subtle but lasting effect. Paul Kiernan covers the U.S. economy for the Wall Street Journal. Paul, what are experts predicting will be the net immigration for the U.S. this year? Measuring immigration flows to the U.S. is just notoriously difficult. But there is a group of economists who wrote a paper for the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank recently predicting that net migration, that is the difference between people coming in and going out, will actually be negative this year. The midpoint of their estimate is negative

$205,000, give or take a quarter million. That would be a dramatic shift. A number of Wall Street economists predict positive net immigration much less than we've seen in recent years. Goldman Sachs has a number of positive 500,000. and Barclays is a little bit lower. That's a dramatic slowdown. But again, the data is messy, and it requires a bit of extrapolation. All of this begs the question, what is the impact on the economy, both in the short and the long term? So in the short term, we're already starting to see pretty strong evidence that the decline

and inflows are starting to crimp growth in the labor supply and jobs. A lot of these people are massively overrepresented in the... the workforces of certain industries. I think about slaughterhouses, poultry plants, farms, especially construction. In the long term, less immigration just means slower economic growth, pressure on the federal deficit because immigrants work at much higher rates than the native-borne population. They draw less from government benefits. And the other kind of interesting thing is without immigration, I think U.S. population growth starts to turn potentially negative in the next decade. And that carries a bunch of implications.

That was Wall Street Journal reporter, Paul Kiernan. Thanks, Paul. Thanks, Alex. In other news, a federal judge in Maryland temporarily blocked the Trump administration from attempting to re-deport Kilmar-Albrego-Garcia, the man it had mistakenly sent to a mega-prison in El Salvador and then returned to the U.S. and charged with human smuggling. Abrego-Garcia is facing removal to Uganda, a country with which he has no. no ties. His lawyer said in a court filing that he had rejected a government deal in which he would have been deported to Costa Rica if he agreed to plead guilty to the human smuggling charges.

And Israeli strikes on a hospital in southern Gaza today killed at least 20 people, including at least five journalists, medical staff, patients, and rescue workers. That's according to Palestinian health authorities. The strikes come amid rising international condemnation of Israeli operations in the enclave, and as Israel plans to expand the war in a new offensive in Gaza City. The Israeli military said that its troops had carried out a strike in the area of Nassar Hospital and that the chief of staff had ordered an inquiry. The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel, quote, deeply regrets the tragic mishap.

Heads up before we go, we've made a correction to the most recent episode of What's News Sunday. We incorrectly said that the average amount that American family spent on college this past year, according to Sally May, was $13,837. It was actually $30,837. And that's what's news for this Monday afternoon. Today's show is produced by Pierre Bienname, with supervising producer Michael Cosmites. I'm Alex O'Solov for the Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with the news show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening. Thank you.