A 1% increase in unauthorized workers raised US home prices by roughly 2.2% and rents by 1.4%.
By Catholics for Catholics
The Biden-era immigration surge came not only with higher numbers of migrants coming into the U.S., but with a new cost: higher home prices and rent rates.
That is according to a Fox News story that indicates that those records are the findings of a Federal Reserve working paper. The findings arrive as immigration remains a pivotal political issue, with Republicans contending former President Joe Biden’s border policies stressed housing and public resources while Democrats have pointed to immigration as helping ease labor shortages and support economic growth.
Published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, the report compiled individual immigration court records and government administrative data. It is among the first big efforts to measure how the unprecedented wave of illegal migration between 2021 and 2024 impacted local economies and affected local labor markets.
Still, the authors warned that the paper is an initial draft circulated for professional comment and that its findings do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas or the Federal Reserve System.
According to the report, researchers found the arrival of illegal immigrants boosted local employment with little measurable effect on wages, but came with a trade-off of increasing housing demand enough to increase home prices and rents.
The researchers found that illegal immigrant worker inflows increased local employment “approximately one-for-one,” meaning a 1% increase in unauthorized workers relative to a local area’s workforce corresponded with roughly a 1% increase in overall employment. The study found no evidence that the immigration surge lowered average wages.
The housing crisis has greatly affected affordability in the U.S. and is a main midterm issue for many voters on both sides of the political aisle.
The invasion of illegal immigrant workers acted as a housing demand shock in markets where supply remained relatively constrained, according to researchers.
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