Federal Reserve Chairman Says Jobless Rate Unlikely to Improve in Near Future
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress on Wednesday that the Jobless Rate will likely stay above 7% for the remainder of Pres. Obama's first term. He said it will take a "significant amount of time" for the economy to create the 8.5 million jobs lost during the recession. However, current levels of legal immigration require the economy to create at least 125,000 new jobs every month just to keep up with the increases in population.
Bernanke's statements are consistent with a study released earlier this month by the Brookings Institute that estimated it would take more than 11 years to close the jobs gap. The jobs gap is defined as the number of jobs it would take to return unemployment to pre-recession levels.
NumbersUSA has been advocating a foreign worker timeout for the past 18 months. In 2009, the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration Yearbook reported that the United States issued more than 1.1 million work permits in to foreign workers. One of the best ways to help narrow the job gap would be to reduce the number of work permits issued to legal immigrants each year, thereby freeing up newly created jobs for unemployed Americans and legal immigrants already in the country.
For more information, see Roy's blog and video on the number of work permits issued each year.