MCALLEN, Texas - The Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement policies are leaving a huge hole in the labor market, says Mike Willis, executive director of the South Texas Manufacturers Association.
In his monthly report, delivered at the group’s meeting at the DoubleTree Suites by Hilton in McAllen, Willis said certain industries in particular have been hit hard. He listed agriculture, construction, trucking, food manufacturing and hospitality.
“Without wading into all the immigration enforcement debates and all that, the reality is that, by most accounts, we are removing at least 500,000 to a million people who were in our workforce, either legally or illegally in the past, in an effort to get our immigration system under control,” Willis said.
“Leaving politics aside, the reality is, it is going to have a big impact on agriculture, construction, trucking, food manufacturing and the hospitality industries, especially.”
Willis highlighted the agriculture industry.
“The estimates I have heard are something like 55 to 60 percent of total agricultural employment in the country is undocumented or illegal immigrants. And that's on top of 300,000 H-2A agriculture visas that we award every year. Three hundred thousand workers come across documented legal and work in the fields and have to return home after nine months.”
Willis continued: “To me, it seems kind of logical… we have those kinds of programs already in place… we could easily expand if we really wanted to, but that hasn't been the case for many, many years, by both parties.”
Willis explained why this is important.
“Why do we care? Because we already have a tight labor market, right? It's a little better now than it was two years ago, but it's still a tight labor market. There's one unemployed person for every job opening in the United States right now. It's usually 1 to 3 or 1 to 4 in a normal labor market. Big picture, there are not many people around the country available to fill all of our jobs that we have right now.”
Artificial intelligence is not going to come to the rescue, Willis predicted. At least not in the short term.
“All the jobs that were being filled by a lot of those folks that are no longer here are not going to be replaced instantly by AI or automation. So, what's going to happen? Those industries are going to have to raise their wages, agriculture, hospitality, food manufacturing and so on, to attract legal workers to work in their facilities.”
This is going to impact the manufacturing sector, Willis predicted.
“This means more competition for your employees and for the talent pool that we're trying to use to hire to fill our manufacturing jobs. So, it's going to further tight the labor market, good, bad or indifferent.”
What compounds the problem for the Rio Grande Valley, Willis said, is that wage rates are 30 to 40 percent higher in places like Austin and San Antonio.
“I'm not trying to scare anybody, but when I see SpaceX is hiring 4,000 more people, and we have about 18,000 people in the whole (manufacturing) industry in the whole Rio Grande Valley, it is pretty significant.”
Willis encouraged manufacturng companies across the Valley to participate in STMA's biennial wages and benefits survey.
