More CA job losses after ICE raids
From CalMatters economy reporter Levi Sumagaysay via email
California’s labor market is showing more signs of stress after high-profile immigration raids in Los Angeles earlier this summer.
Californians — citizens and noncitizens alike — reported a decline in work for the second month in a row since the Trump administration’s immigration raids in the state began in June, according to UC Merced researchers.
The researchers found a 4.9% drop in the number of Californians reporting work from May to July, the period of the most intense immigration sweeps.
The number of Latinos who reported work during this period fell 8%, followed by Blacks (5.6%), Asians (5.2%) and whites (3.4%). The state’s U.S. citizens saw a bigger drop in the number of workers (equivalent to a loss of 414,832) than noncitizens (327,659), but noncitizens saw a bigger percentage drop (12.3% vs. 3.3%).
Last month, the researchers released their first analysis of U.S. Census Bureau survey data to show the effects of the immigration sweeps on the state’s private sector employment. The 3.1% drop in employment from May to June was second only to the surge in job loss during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The analysis is based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly survey that asks members of a sampling of households about whether they worked the week before. That’s different from monthly unemployment numbers, which is a percentage that’s also based on the survey but does not include people who have not looked for work in the past four weeks.