That 10% number is amazing, but I would speculate that the real number is actually much higher because I don’t think there is any accurate way to estimate the number of illegal workers. Many of them are disguised as legitimate workers with bogus SSN so not sure how that skews the statistics.
In terms of the impact, nobody knows but that is my curiosity. Clearly the majority of job growth since 2000 has been related to the housing boom. I contend that not only are most of these newly created jobs low wage jobs, but a large portion (majority?) of these new low wage jobs are filled by illegal immigrants. It would be fasinating to know what actual percentage of the new job growth since 2000 has been filled by illegals, but that is a statistic we will never know for certain.
