(NewsNation) — Attracting workers from abroad is the answer to America’s shrinking labor force, an opinion piece by the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board posits.
“The working-age U.S. population has peaked absent additional immigration,” Madeline Zavodny writes in a forthcoming paper from the National Foundation for American Policy. “New international migrants are the only potential source of growth in the U.S. working-age population over the remainder of the next two decades.”
Zavodny, an economics professor at the University of North Florida, based her analysis on data from the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics, according to the WSJ.
The piece explains a sliding birth rate is partially responsible for the declining workforce. According to a new study, by 2040, the U.S. could have more than six million fewer working-age people than in 2022.
The other reason identified is that Baby Boomers are living longer and “aging out” of the workforce.
Despite some Americans seeing foreign workers as competition, Zavodny argues immigration was “the sole source of growth in the U.S. working-age population in 2021 and 2022.”