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The U.S. Economy Needs ImmigrationCan the U.S. economy thrive without a steady stream of immigration? This week on “Interesting Times,” Jason Furman, a contributing Times Opinion writer and an economist at the Harvard Kennedy School, tells Ross Douthat why he thinks our future “rises and falls with immigration.”
Are you optimistic about the long-term future of the American economy otherwise? I’m reasonably optimistic. Good. Why? Why are you optimistic? We have had over the last 50 years nearly 2 percent annual productivity growth. So every year you basically figure it out how to do 2 percent more with a given amount of labor than you did a year before. Now, that’s not as high as what we had in the 1950s and 1960s, when we were coming off all of the World War II innovations. But that’s pretty cool and impressive, that no matter how advanced stuff gets, that we keep figuring out how to squeeze out more. A.I. might be — add on top of that — might not even add on top of that. It might be how we keep getting to 2 percent each year, but that accumulates up and makes a difference over time. Second, though, is my optimism about the U.S. economy does rise and fall a lot with what we do on immigration. Immigration matters both for your labor force and how many people you have to work, which is increasingly a challenge for the United States were it not for immigration. And not every country can overcome unfavorable demographics, but we really can with this. And then immigration also matters for that 2 percent number, that productivity growth. Because a lot of that innovation, a lot of the companies we’re talking about are founded by, staffed by, run by first- or second-generation immigrants. So that, to me, a lot of our future does rise and fall with immigration. But I grant you, I would love to see the world have more of a growing population than it has now. And I’d feel better about the next 200 years if I knew either that population was growing, or that the robots could do everything else and we could just sit around and chat with each other on podcasts.
Can the U.S. economy thrive without a steady stream of immigration? This week on “Interesting Times,” Jason Furman, a contributing Times Opinion writer and an economist at the Harvard Kennedy School, tells Ross Douthat why he thinks our future “rises and falls with immigration.”
By Interesting Times
October 23, 2025