Mass Immigration in 2024: 3.8 Million Illegals and the Looming Wage Disaster

David Peinado Romero / shutterstock.com
David Peinado Romero / shutterstock.com

Earlier this year, the International Monetary Fund’s managing director highlighted that the United States “abundant labor coming across the border” prevents wage increases, indicating that high levels of migration are suppressing wage growth.

A recent report from a Federal Reserve branch indicates that millions of border crossings could occur in 2024. They predict that 3.8 million undocumented immigrants will enter the U.S. in the 2024 fiscal year. This number differs from the January estimate by the Congressional Budget Office, which predicted a total of 3.3 million immigrants for the same period.

Recent declines in crossings, following President Biden’s executive order allowing asylum applications to be rejected for individuals who illegally cross the border when daily crossings surpass 2,500 per day, suggest that continued decreases could bring mass migration inflows below both the Fed’s and CBO’s estimates.

The Federal Reserve’s report used CBO methods with more recent data to estimate higher levels of illegal immigration by comparing the number of immigration court cases in each state with the ratio of job vacancies to unemployed individuals. It found that recent immigration spikes are responsible for approximately one-fifth of the decline in the ratio of job vacancies to unemployed individuals. This supports the IMF’s assertion that an influx of labor reduces wage growth.

The Congressional Budget Office has recently updated its immigration projections, indicating that most of the increase is attributed to undocumented immigrants. Federal Reserve analyst Evgeniya A. Duzhak explains that this new data suggests that more immigrants are likely to have alleviated some of the pressure on the job market. While the influx of immigrants might ease job market pressure, it also contributes to lower wage growth due to a larger labor pool.

Duzhak’s study also found that Florida, New York, Texas, and California received the highest immigration cases in 2022 and 2023. However, in per capita terms, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Utah, and Colorado had the highest rates, suggesting these states may have experienced the most significant labor market changes due to migration.