Job gains for immigrants and not native workers?

There's been a persistent right-wing talking point the past few years that the job gains have been mostly among immigrants and not native born workers. But prime age native born workers are above their pre-pandemic employment.

It is making the all too common error of not adjusting for compositional changes to the work force over time.

If you don't adjust for the aging of the work force over time it can make it appear like native born workers aren't recovering. But native born workers are getting older and retiring over time. Older people tend to have lower labor force participation than younger people.

One way to handle this is by looking at prime age workers as a group. That way your frame of reference is less sensitive to aging compositional effects.

You can see it here in a recent BLS employment report focusing on native born and immigrant workers:

I should also mention BLS can't differentiate between legal and illegal immigrants. The survey only asks about native born versus immigrant. So this isn't merely about illegal immigrants, but legal immigrants.