Each Labor Day since 2021, I have written posts explaining how breaking down barriers to labor mobility can help many millions of workers around the world. The main points everything last year's post are just as relevant today. So I am reprinting it with some updates and modifications, many of them related to the awful deterioration in immigration policy over the last year:
Today is Labor Day. As usual, there is much discussion of what can be done to help workers. But few focus on the one type of reform that is likely to help more poor and disadvantaged workers than virtually anything else: increasing labor mobility. In the United States and around the world, far too many workers are trapped in places where it is difficult or impossible for them to ever escape poverty. They could vastly improve their lot if allowed to "vote with their feet" by moving to locations where there are better job opportunities. That would also be an enormous boon to the rest of society.
