Migrant workers get better pay as US employers fill jobs

Migrant workers are reportedly securing more job opportunities with better pay and conditions as US employers scramble to keep their businesses humming despite historically tight labor conditions.

Many business owners are “paying a premium for migrant workers” due to a shortage of available workers who are US citizens, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The report noted that the pool of migrant workers securing jobs includes both those with valid work permits and others who lack proper documentation and entered the country illegally.

Luis Reyes, the owner of Washington, DC, restaurant Lauriol Plaza, told the paper he has resorted to putting up fliers in areas with large populations of migrants in a bid to increase staff.

“The scarcity is huge,” Reyes said. “It’s a terrible stress. Many times I suffer from insomnia thinking about what we are going to do to give service.”

Reyes has reportedly boosted benefits and handed out cash bonuses of anywhere from $250 to $5,000 to employees in December.

Exact statistics detailing migrant pay are nearly impossible to obtain, but the World Bank estimated that remittance payments from the US to Latin American countries jumped by 9% to $142 billion last year — a sign that workers are flush with more cash.

Construction gigs in the Washington, DC, area that paid migrants an average of $120 per day before the COVID-19 pandemic are now offering $200 per day for the same work, Lenin Cálix, an Ecuadorian migrant who holds membership in the United Workers of Washington, DC, told the Journal.

The outlet interviewed several other migrants who described increased pay and a surge in work opportunities since they arrived in the US.

Employers told the paper that the number of available legal work visas — a total of about 130,000 for fiscal 2023 — is insufficient to meet their labor needs.

“We have never faced greater challenges in filling our seasonal staff vacancies than now,” said small business owner Dave King, who runs the Lake George RV Park campsite in Queensbury, NY.

US employers had approximately 11 million job vacancies in December, compared to just 5.7 million people who were looking for work, according to federal data. The labor drain has been particularly difficult for restaurants, construction firms and other small business dependent on blue-collar workers.

The national employment rate plunged to just 3.4% in January — its lowest level since May 1969 — as US employers added a whopping 517,000 jobs. Last month’s hiring surge was driven by “gains in leisure and hospitality, professional and business services, and health care,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The labor market has remained tight despite the Federal Reserve’s ongoing series of interest rate hikes, which are meant to cool the economy and bring down inflation that surged to its highest level in decades last year.

This week, Fed Chair Jerome Powell and other policymakers warned that the blockbuster January jobs report signaled a need for more rate hikes.

So far, the only clear signs of loosening conditions in the labor market have occurred in the tech sector, where industry giants such as Meta, Amazon and Microsoft have slashed white-collar corporate jobs due to worsened economic conditions.