Noah Smith: Mass deportations will not significantly raise native workers' wages
Noah Smith · Is AI Really Taking Our Jobs? — With Noah Smith · Jul 2, 2025 · at 40:53
Economics writer Noah Smith explains why immigration flows and deportations have a negligible net effect on aggregate wage levels.
0:00 / 0:20exact quote · 20.4s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“The reason why a flood of immigration does not really actually reduce wages is that immigrants are also buying things and the demand from buying things creates labor demand for native born people. And so, so immigrants really don't do much to wages. And what that means is when you kick out a whole bunch of immigrants, you're not gonna do much to wages either.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Noah Smith
Smith: Predictions that AI will replace 40-60% of jobs are 'hooey'
“This is complete hooey, and they all come up with really huge percentage, like, 40%, 60% of your jobs are gonna be replaced by AI, so, you know, every, there's a million groups doing this, and they'll come up with different things, and it's hooey for a number …”
Smith: Government-run grocery stores will drain public funds and crush bodegas
“So if you make government run grocery stores, it'll do two things. Number one It will outcompete all the little indie grocery stores and bodegas, thus like a meager source of capital and wealth accumulation for like poor people in poor neighborhoods... And the…”
Smith: AI productivity boom requires reorganizing production processes, not replacing workers
“Eventually we may like people will come along and say, you know what?
I could just organize my company entirely different to take more advantage of AI.
And I don't just have to replace my humans with AI.
I just have the humans do different things and the AI do…”
Smith: AI-vulnerable occupations continue rising as share of US jobs
“Returning to a measure reintroduced in two, 20, 23, we examine American data on employment by occupation, singling out workers that are believed to be vulnerable to AI. These are white collar employees, including people in back office support, financial operat…”
Smith: IBM fired workers for AI automation and had to rehire
“So we saw this thing where IBM fired all these people because it thought they could replace their jobs with AI and then had to hire them all back, had to hire like a ton of people back. Maybe not the exact same people, not doing the exact same things, but for,…”