In a new insight, AAF President Douglas Holtz-Eakin reviews the state of the labor force in the near term and into the foreseeable future, examines the problems with current U.S. policy toward employer-based immigration, and offers potential reforms.

Key points:

• The United States faces a shortage of workers in the near term and demographic trends indicate such pressures will continue to strain the labor pool over the longer term.
• The current U.S. employment-based immigration system has long-standing problems that make it unable to remediate these shortages: It caps the number of workers at unrealistically low levels, allocates them inflexibly and inefficiently, and processes cases too slowly.
• Congress should act to reform the system to admit more workers, process those workers more rapidly, and allow greater flexibility in visa status and mobility across the economy.

Read the analysis