One reason for the surprise jobs boom? Immigrants are back.

In May, once again, the U.S. economy trounced Wall Street forecasts. The nation’s employers added 339,000 jobs, much higher than predicted. This marks 13 out of the past 14 months that the U.S. job market has beaten expectations.

In fact, many economists have been warning of not just a slowdown, but an imminent recession, for about a year now. Yet nothing about this job market suggests recession. Why has the economy overperformed? Or, to put it another way, why has the economy been so consistently underestimated?

I know some people (mostly Democrats) like to blame a too-pessimistic media, or Republicans rooting for President Biden to fail, or somesuch. Whatever you make of those complaints, they are unlikely to explain why Wall Street analysts — who are not exactly bleeding-heart liberals, and who are also paid to get these numbers right — have been so off, and almost always in the same direction.

I’ve previously written about several possible theories. Today, let’s focus on a couple of factors that might be driving the unexpected strength in the job market. I’m referring to two groups of workers who have themselves been underestimated: immigrants and women.

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