Women Reeling in Jobless Recovery Labor Market

The shocking leak from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that President Obama has authorized printing up to 34 million blank green cards that could be used for future immigration surges is bad, bad news for already struggling American workers.

An Obama executive amnesty would circumvent Congress and provide work permits to millions of illegal immigrants living in the U.S. and millions more overseas workers even though more than 92 million Americans are not attached to the labor force, and with job creation barely keeping up with population growth.

Jobs are at such a premium that to fully understand the market’s overall weakness, each demographic should be analyzed separately. Women, for example, have been particularly hard hit during the jobless recovery. The Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that during September nearly 56 million women age 16 and older neither have a job nor are actively looking for one. Women’s participation rate dropped to 56.7 percent, its lowest level since 1988.

In short, high school girls who might want a job to buy a car, college women hoping to defray tuition expenses and empty-nesters that may want to earn extra money to help pay the mortgage are finding employment elusive.

Adding millions more work-authorized immigrants into a tight labor market, as President Obama has promised to do, will make American women’s job searches tougher. And since some immigrants might be willing to work for lower wages, the fortunate women who have a job may be forced to the sidelines.

Please go to the CAPS Action Alert page here to tell your Senators to stand with American workers and not support massive immigration increases.