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Are 'almost all of the new jobs' in the U.S. 'going to illegals'?

Are 'almost all of the new jobs' in the U.S. 'going to illegals'?

This fact brief was originally published by Wisconsin Watch. Read the original here. Fact briefs are published by newsrooms in the Gigafact network, and republished by The Fulcrum. Visit Gigafact to learn more.

Are 'almost all of the new jobs' in the US 'going to illegals'?

No.

About 150,000 foreigners make unauthorized entry to the United States each month, yet job growth far exceeds that.


Former President Donald Trump said at a June 18 rally in Racine, Wis., "almost all of the news jobs" in the U.S. are going to undocumented immigrants, but that's mathematically dubious at best.

All immigrants constitute 18.6 perent of the U.S. labor force. Studies have found the top industries employing undocumented workers are agriculture, construction and administrative support.

Employers created about 272,000 jobs in May, higher than the average monthly gain of 232,000. That figure excludes farm jobs. More than half of the jobs were in health care, government and hospitality.

There were roughly 10.5 million individuals living in the U.S. without legal status in 2021, or about 3 percent of the population. Federal law prohibits hiring undocumented immigrants.

The U.S. unemployment rate averaged 3.6 percent in 2023, the lowest rate in decades.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

New York Times The U.S. Economy Is Surpassing Expectations. Immigration Is One Reason.

Statista Annual unemployment rate U.S. 2023

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Unemployment rate inches up during 2023, labor force participation rises

Pew Research What we know about unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S.

AULA Blog Immigration as the Current Main Driver of Economic Growth in the U.S.

New American Economy Undocumented Immigrants and the U.S. Economy

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Total payroll employment up 272,000, health care up 68,000, in May 2024

Population Reference Bureau Immigration to the United States

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After the Ceasefire, the Violence Continues – and Cries for New Words

An Israeli army vehicle moves on the Israeli side, near the border with the Gaza Strip on November 18, 2025 in Southern Israel, Israel.

(Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images)

After the Ceasefire, the Violence Continues – and Cries for New Words

Since October 10, 2025, the day when the US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was announced, Israel has killed at least 401 civilians, including at least 148 children. This has led Palestinian scholar Saree Makdisi to decry a “continuing genocide, albeit one that has shifted gears and has—for now—moved into the slow lane. Rather than hundreds at a time, it is killing by twos and threes” or by twenties and thirties as on November 19 and November 23 – “an obscenity that has coalesced into a new normal.” The Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik describes the post-ceasefire period as nothing more than a “reducefire,” quoting the warning issued by Amnesty International’s secretary general Agnès Callamard that the ”world must not be fooled” into believing that Israel’s genocide is over.

A visual analysis of satellite images conducted by the BBC has established that since the declared ceasefire, “the destruction of buildings in Gaza by the Israeli military has been continuing on a huge scale,” entire neighborhoods “levelled” through “demolitions,” including large swaths of farmland and orchards. The Guardian reported already in March of 2024, that satellite imagery proved the “destruction of about 38-48% of tree cover and farmland” and 23% of Gaza’s greenhouses “completely destroyed.” Writing about the “colossal violence” Israel has wrought on Gaza, Palestinian legal scholar Rabea Eghbariah lists “several variations” on the term “genocide” which researchers found the need to introduce, such as “urbicide” (the systematic destruction of cities), “domicide” (systematic destruction of housing), “sociocide,” “politicide,” and “memoricide.” Others have added the concepts “ecocide,” “scholasticide” (the systematic destruction of Gaza’s schools, universities, libraries), and “medicide” (the deliberate attacks on all aspects of Gaza’s healthcare with the intent to “wipe out” all medical care). It is only the combination of all these “-cides,” all amounting to massive war crimes, that adequately manages to describe the Palestinian condition. Constantine Zurayk introduced the term “Nakba” (“catastrophe” in Arabic) in 1948 to name the unparalleled “magnitude and ramifications of the Zionist conquest of Palestine” and its historical “rupture.” When Eghbariah argues for “Nakba” as a “new legal concept,” he underlines, however, that to understand its magnitude, one needs to go back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, in which the British colonial power promised “a national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine, even though just 6 % of its population were Jewish. From Nakba as the “constitutive violence of 1948,” we need today to conceptualize “Nakba as a structure,” an “overarching frame.”

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Campbell's episode, now the subject of national headlines and an ongoing high-profile legal complaint, is troubling not only for its blunt language but for what it reveals about the hidden injuries that erode the social contract linking institutions to citizens, workers to workplaces, and brands to buyers. If the response ends with the usual PR maneuvers—rapid firings and the well-rehearsed "this does not reflect our values" statement. Then both the lesson and the opportunity for genuine reform by a company or individual are lost. To grasp what this controversy means for the broader corporate landscape, we first have to examine how leadership reveals its actual beliefs.

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