“…a fresh argument for the productive value of inequality.” - David Autor, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“…reminds us that inequality sends a signal of what society lacks most, in America’s case, entrepreneurship and risk taking.” - Lawrence Lindsey, CEO, The Lindsey Group, former Director of the National Economic Council
“…challenges misconceptions that distort our economic debates.” - Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute
“…a must-read for serious students of economic policy.” - Glenn Hubbard, Dean, Columbia Business School, and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
“…a fresh argument for the productive value of inequality.” - David Autor, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
“…reminds us that inequality sends a signal of what society lacks most, in America’s case, entrepreneurship and risk taking.” - Lawrence Lindsey, CEO, The Lindsey Group, former Director of the National Economic Council
“Unintended Consequences should be read by anyone who takes for granted the superiority of progressive taxation and has not thought carefully about the trade-offs involved.” - The New Republic
“…a very valuable contribution.” - Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury and director of the National Economic Council, president emeritus, Harvard University
“A full-throated defense of economic dynamism.” - The Wall Street Journal
“…a comprehensive explanation of the modern economy.” - Julian Robertson, Founder, Tiger Management
“Unintended Consequences offers deep and well-argued analyses on almost every issue.” - The New York Times
“…a must-read for serious students of economic policy.” - Glenn Hubbard, Dean, Columbia Business School, and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers

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America’s Immigration Mess: An Illustrated Guide

Nicholas Eberstadt and Patrick Norrick American Enterprise Institute

Date Posted:: June 2, 2025
Is Database:: Database

The US foreign-born population reached 51.4mm, or 15.4% of the population in 2024, Nicholas Eberstad notes, surpassing the prior peak of 14.8% set in 1890.

In 2024, according to CPS estimates, America’s total foreign-born population surpassed the 50 million mark for the first time. No less significant, the CPS series indicates that the foreign-born now exceed 15% of the national population for the first time since such figures were first collected (in the 1850 census). The previous high water mark for percentage of foreign-born was in 1890—during what we might call America’s first wave of mass immigration, when the fraction peaked at 14.8%. The immigration restrictions enacted in the 1920s reflected the deep unpopularity of mass immigration at that time among influential political constituencies. Strong anti-immigration sentiment had been evident in America since at least the 1890s; sweeping national restrictions on immigration were very nearly enacted in 1905. Mass immigration was associated in the contemporary mentality with the widening income and wealth gaps and depressed wages for less skilled native-born men that characterized the First Gilded Age. It is a reminder that stringent curbs on immigration have occurred in the USA before.

Quo Vadis, Hispania? Part One

Nicholas Eberstadt American Enterprise Institute

Date Posted:: August 25, 2026
Is Database:: Database

Btw 2000 and 2025, ~98% of Spain’s population growth was due to immigration. In 2024, about one-third of babies born in Spain had a foreign-born mother.

Without immigration, Spain’s population would have stagnated in the first quarter of the 21st century. According to official Spanish data, births exceeded deaths by barely 200,000 for the 2000-2025 period (2025 numbers still provisional)—or less than one half of 1% of Spain’s 2000 population. Thanks to its robust immigration inflows, however, Spain registered more population growth than any other EU country between 2000 and 2025. Virtually all (98%) of Spain’s population growth was due to immigration during those years. And since deaths have exceeded births in Spain since 2015, any future growth would have to come entirely from additional immigration.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup^® AI

Spain’s natural population balance turned negative in 2015, making immigration the sole driver of any future population growth.
without continued inflows, Spain’s population will shrink.

Four Ways Europe’s Big Immigration Experiment Has Changed Spain

Barney Jopson, Alan Smith and Irene de la Torre Arenas Financial Times

Date Posted:: May 7, 2026
Is Database:: Database

Spain’s foreign-born population grew from ~5% to ~20% in less than 25 years. Since 2020, ~25% of the 1.1mm new jobs created in the EU were Spanish, and ~70% were filled by immigrants. At 1.1 births/woman, Spain has the second-lowest birth rate in the EU.

Over the past two years, Spain has been the world’s fastest-growing large advanced economy and an engine of EU job creation. Since 2020, it has been responsible for one in four of the 11.1mn new jobs added across the bloc, according to FT analysis. Roughly 70% of those have gone to immigrants, according to Funcas, a think-tank, which has examined the period since 2019. Spain’s unemployment rate remained the second highest in the EU at 10.3% in March. Juan Félix Huarte, chair of Uriel Investments, whose businesses range from waste management to renewables, says immigrants have become vital for the country’s economy for two underlying reasons. One is Spain’s fertility rate of 1.1 births per woman, the lowest in the EU after Malta and little more than half the rate of 2.1 needed to maintain demographic stability. “The Spanish, unfortunately, don’t have children. We have pets, but we don’t have children,” Huarte says. The other reason, he says, is that many young Spaniards are disinclined to take arduous jobs: “We’re getting society far too used to government assistance, to grants, to support from the state.”

Takeaways by Macro Roundup^® AI

Four Ways Europe’s Big Immigration Experiment Has Changed Spain.
Since 2020, it has been responsible for one in four of the 11.1mn new jobs added across the bloc, according.
Roughly 70% of those have gone to immigrants, according to Funcas, a think-tank, which has examined the period since 2019.

How Does Immigration Shape Average Labor Productivity? Evidence from the CPS

Serdar Ozkan and Nicholas Sullivan Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

Date Posted:: March 31, 2026
Is Database:: Database

Labor productivity increased 8.2% over the 2023–2025 period, while a CPS-based measure of worker quality has stayed within 1% of its Q1 2023 level, despite significant changes in the immigrant-intensity of the labor force over the period.

On net, the U.S. workforce became meaningfully more immigrant-heavy from 2023 to 2024 and then partially reversed, all within a three-year window. Despite these compositional changes, our CPS-based worker quality index barely moved. It hovered within less than 1% of its first quarter 2023 level throughout the entire period, while BLS nonfarm business productivity climbed 8.2% over the same span. Why would swings in workforce composition leave average productivity nearly unchanged? Two reasons. First, the shifts in employment shares by place of birth, while noticeable, are small in absolute terms. Even with a 1pp rise in the U.S. employment share of lower-productivity, Latin American-born workers moved the needle on aggregate worker quality only modestly—far less than the roughly 8% productivity gain recorded by the BLS over the period. Second, not all immigrants are less productive than U.S.-born workers. Central American immigrants—who accounted for the largest single increment of the foreign-born workforce share—earn wages that fall about 25% below the U.S.-born average. In isolation, their growing employment shares put modest downward pressure on average productivity. But workers arriving from Europe, Asia, and other high-income regions display the opposite pattern: Their predicted wages exceed the U.S.-born average by about 20%, reflecting higher educational attainment and more highly compensated occupations.

With Less Immigration, Urban Growth Slowed in 2025

Jed Kolko Jed Kolko Substack

Date Posted:: March 26, 2026
Is Database:: Database

As immigration slowed in 2025, large urban counties’ growth continued to slow relative to that of suburban, rural and smaller urban counties. Domestic migration continued to consist of moves from expensive counties to more affordable suburban areas.

Urban counties grew more slowly than suburban counties, smaller metropolitan areas, and rural areas in 2025. All types of counties grew more slowly in 2025 than in 2023 and 2024 because immigration fell. However, the slowdown was especially sharp for urban counties. The only other years this century when urban counties lagged all other types of places were in 2020-2022, when people moved out of cities during the pandemic, and in 2003-2006, when the housing bubble boosted housing construction in outlying suburban areas and drew new residents from cities. (This is based on vintage 2025 Census population estimates, released this morning.) Domestic migration is driven more by affordability, with people leaving expensive urban counties for more affordable suburban areas and smaller communities.

The H-1B Wage Gap Really Is That Large

George Borjas City Journal

Date Posted:: March 11, 2026
Is Database:: Database

Responding to He and Ozimek’s claim that his paper overstates the wage gap, Borjas argues “H-1B workers should be compared to native workers in the year when they will be earning the bulk of the salary, not in the year when they were awarded the visa.”

The table summarizes the results of both my analysis and that of He-Ozimek. The first row reports a 14.1% wage gap estimated using H-1B wage data from the FY2021-FY2024 lotteries and the 2023 American Community Surveys (ACS), as I did in my original paper, [controlling for] age, gender, education, geography, and occupation. These numbers are inflation-adjusted, as the NBER paper notes. Row 2 presents the results implied by the He-Ozimek research design, which suggest a smaller wage gap, depending on the exact specification. There is, however, a fundamental error in that design. He-Ozimek calculate the H-1B wage gap by comparing the wage of the FY2024 lottery winners with the wage of natives in the 2023 ACS. H-1B workers should be compared to native workers in the year when they will be earning the bulk of the salary, not in the year when they were awarded the visa. The FY2024 H-1B lottery was conducted in March 2023. The actual employment of H-1B recipients begins after their H-1B status is approved and after the federal fiscal year begins on October 1, 2023; the earliest that FY2024 recipients could actually start earning was in the last quarter of 2023.

How 250 Years Of Immigration Shaped America

Economist Staff Economist

Date Posted:: March 4, 2026
Is Database:: Database

At 15.8%, the foreign-born population of the US is above its ~15% previous peak in 1890. That prior peak gave way under immigration restrictions such as the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) and the Immigration Act of 1924.

After periods of high immigration, restrictions have tended to follow. In 1890 the foreign-born share of America’s population reached nearly 15% (a threshold that would not be surpassed until the mid 2020s). The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 banned Chinese labourers from immigrating to America for ten years, the first federal law to restrict immigration explicitly based on race or nationality. In 1924 Congress capped annual arrivals from Europe to just 2% of each nationality’s population residing in America at the time of the 1890 census, and banned immigration from Asia outright. These quotas suppressed immigration for 40 years and prevented America from accepting thousands of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Europe. By 1970 America’s foreign-born population had fallen to around 5%.

The US foreign-born population reached 51.4mm, or 15.4% of the population in 2024, Nicholas Eberstad notes, surpassing the prior peak of 14.8% set in 1890.

Related Articles:

Btw 2000 and 2025, ~98% of Spain’s population growth was due to immigration. In 2024, about one-third of babies born in Spain had a foreign-born mother.

Does Spain's future population depend entirely on immigration?

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

Related Articles:

Spain’s foreign-born population grew from ~5% to ~20% in less than 25 years. Since 2020, ~25% of the 1.1mm new jobs created in the EU were Spanish, and ~70% were filled by immigrants. At 1.1 births/woman, Spain has the second-lowest birth rate in the EU.

How Has Immigration Driven Economic Growth in Spain?

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

Related Articles:

Labor productivity increased 8.2% over the 2023–2025 period, while a CPS-based measure of worker quality has stayed within 1% of its Q1 2023 level, despite significant changes in the immigrant-intensity of the labor force over the period.

Related Articles:

As immigration slowed in 2025, large urban counties’ growth continued to slow relative to that of suburban, rural and smaller urban counties. Domestic migration continued to consist of moves from expensive counties to more affordable suburban areas.

Related Articles:

Responding to He and Ozimek’s claim that his paper overstates the wage gap, Borjas argues “H-1B workers should be compared to native workers in the year when they will be earning the bulk of the salary, not in the year when they were awarded the visa.”

Related Articles:

At 15.8%, the foreign-born population of the US is above its ~15% previous peak in 1890. That prior peak gave way under immigration restrictions such as the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) and the Immigration Act of 1924.

Related Articles:

Takeaways by Macro Roundup^® AI

Takeaways by Macro Roundup^® AI