Household employment crept up by a minuscule 28,000 in December 2012 — with the gains redounding exclusively to Hispanics

In December 2012, non-Hispanic employment actually fell by 58,000. Over the past 12 months the number of employed Hispanics grew by 7.2%, or 8.5-times the 0.85% growth reported in non-Hispanic employment. Put differently, Hispanics are 16% of the labor force but they received 60% of the jobs created in the past year. Immigration explains as much as one-third of December 2012’s rise in Hispanic employment. From 1996 to December 2012 the foreign-born share of total U.S. employment rose steadily, from 10.6% to 16.2%. Over this period the number of employed immigrants rose by 9.85 million while the number of the unemployed native-born rose by 3.51 million and the number of the native-born who dropped out of the labor force entirely rose by about 17 million. Some 20.5 million native-born Americans were either unemployed or underemployed as of December 2012.