How immigrant workers in US have helped boost job growth and stave off a recession

By PAUL WISEMAN, GISELA SALOMON and CHRISTOPHER RUGABER
Associated Press

MIAMI (AP) — Millions of jobs that new immigrants have been filling in the United States appear to solve a riddle that has confounded economists for at least a year: How has the U.S. economy managed to prosper, adding hundreds of thousands of jobs, month after month, at a time when the Federal Reserve has aggressively raised interest rates — normally a recipe for a recession? It turns out that the influx of foreign-born adults vastly raised the supply of available workers at a time when a labor shortage had left many companies unable to fill jobs. Over the past year, in fact, immigrants have accounted for all the growth in U.S. employment.