New York politicians are clamoring for Washington to give the hundreds of thousands of migrants living in the city work permits, arguing that, as Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) puts it, “many businesses suffer from labor shortages.”
But this argument ignores the massive decline in labor force participation among the less-educated in New York — the share of working-age people working or at least looking for work.
New York doesn’t have a shortage or workers.
It has a shortage of people willing to work — and depressing wages by flooding the job market with migrants isn’t going to help. . . .