To read more of The Economist’s data journalism visit our Graphic detail page.
THE CRISIS along America’s southern border is a political liability for Joe Biden. Polling suggests that just 27% of Americans approve of the president’s handling of immigration; more than twice as many say they trust Donald Trump, his likely challenger in November’s election. Increased migration is not all down to policymaking in Washington, DC. But our ten charts below show how the problem has worsened over recent administrations.
Start with the number of undocumented, or illegal, migrants crossing the border. By these numbers Mr Biden is a clear outlier. During his presidency there have been record numbers of apprehensions and expulsions at the border; nearly 250,000 people crossed in November alone.
The president with the lowest number of arrivals in at least four decades is Barack Obama. During his first term yearly apprehensions averaged out at just 431,000, down from an average of 1.2m in the 1980s through to the early 2000s.
Numbers began to rise again under Mr Trump. In 2019 the surge was so great that a quarter of the recent arrivals were released into the country, as government detention facilities and local jails struggled to keep up.
America’s tight labour market increases the incentive for people looking to earn a better living. Wars and global instability are also playing a part. Whereas most migrants used to come from just Mexico and the Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras), people from these countries now make up less than two-thirds of all those apprehended (see chart 2). The share of Venezuelans is growing, and tens of thousands of people from as far as India, Russia and China are also seeking asylum in America.
All this is putting pressure on the country’s overstretched immigration courts. Our third chart shows that the backlog of cases more than doubled during Mr Trump’s presidency, and doubled again under Mr Biden—the backlog now stands at more than 3m.
The number of judges who deal with these cases has risen steadily over time, though not by enough to make a dent. If America’s 659 immigration judges ruled on four cases every business day it would still take them more than four years to clear the docket (without adding any other cases). The Congressional Research Service, a government body, reckons that even doubling the number of judges would not clear the backlog until 2032.
Our fourth chart shows what this backlog means for asylum waiting times. Judges reached a decision on only around 70,000 applications in the 12 months to October. Most of those cases are likely to have been several years old. The long wait is a further incentive for migrants to cross the border illegally, even if they have a weak claim to asylum. The low chance of detention means they could get at least a few years’ work in America before a decision is even made.
Roughly equal numbers of people were granted and denied the right to stay in the past two years. That is far more than in Mr Trump’s day, when only around a third of rulings ended in asylum being granted.
Handling these cases is all the more difficult when families and children are involved. Immigration detention centres were built to house single adult men, not families and children. Encounters of unaccompanied children reached similar peaks under both Mr Obama and Mr Trump (though the latter’s administration also separated children from their parents, meaning the true number was even higher). During the most recent wave, under Mr Biden, the number has rocketed (see chart 5).
Despite these pressures, the number of agents hired to patrol the border has barely budged since at least 2014. In the 2017 fiscal year, during which Mr Trump was elected president, there were 746 fewer agents than the year before. In the year of the 2020 election, the number rose by less than 100. Funding for Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the agency charged with patrolling America’s borders, has stalled amid partisan fighting. Adjusted for prices, this fiscal year’s requested budget for the agency is roughly the same as it was in 2018.
Detaining illegal migrants can be done by CBP officers at the border, or by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency anywhere in the country. Mr Trump enjoyed the show of force that came with ICE raids; they were a prominent feature of his time in office. Arrests peaked in May 2019, when roughly 57,000 people were taken into custody. That has since dropped to roughly 20,000 per month during Mr Biden’s term.
Some of these detentions will lead to deportations, rates of which have fallen since Mr Obama left office (he was nicknamed “deporter-in-chief” among rights groups). Annual “non-citizen removals” were on average 22% higher in his second term than in Mr Trump’s time in office.
The current administration has taken a different approach. On the campaign trail in 2020 Mr Biden promised a pathway to citizenship for some unauthorised immigrants already in America. Deportations have since dropped to record lows. ICE was told to prioritise certain people for deportation, mainly recent arrivals or those who posed a threat to national security. The perception that Mr Biden is more welcoming than his predecessor is no doubt contributing to the current surge.
Despite the increasing number of migrants reaching the border, the amount of people actually living in America illegally had, until recently, been falling. The Pew Research Centre reckons that there were 10.5m illegal immigrants in 2021, the latest year available. That is roughly the same as in 2017 and fewer than in any other year between 2005 and 2015. It also puts illegal migrants at roughly 3% of people living in America and 22% of the country’s foreign-born population—the lowest shares since the 1990s. This data does not include estimates since the latest wave of encounters at the border; some 600,000 people are thought to have slipped through undetected in 2023. But the numbers did go down under Mr Trump and Mr Obama and in the latter years of George W. Bush’s presidency.
Our final chart shows how America’s opinion of illegal migration has hardened, especially among the left. A poll in December 2017 found that only 12% of Democrats favoured building a wall at the southern border (one of Mr Trump’s main campaign promises in 2016). In December 2023 that rose to 32%.
Construction of the border wall, however, has done little to help. For all Mr Trump’s talk, the Obama administration added more new barriers than he managed. Building has continued under Mr Biden, though record numbers of people are still showing up. Decades of neglect wrapped up in political fighting has crippled the country’s immigration system. Our charts show that neither party has made meaningful improvements.■
The columns of Royal Exchange are dressed for Christmas, at Bank in the City of London, the capital’s financial district, on 20th November 2024, in London, England.
Richard Baker | In Pictures | Getty Images
LONDON — U.K. inflation rose to 2.6% in November, the Office for National Statistics said Wednesday, marking the second straight monthly increase in the headline figure.
The reading was in line with the forecast of economists polled by Reuters, and climbed from 2.3% in October.
Core inflation, excluding energy, food, alcohol and tobacco, came in at 3.5%, just under a Reuters forecast of 3.6%.
Headline price rises hit a three-and-a-half year low of 1.7% in September, but was expected to tick higher in the following months, partly due to an increase in the regulator-set energy price cap this winter.
“This upwards trajectory looks set to continue over the next few months,” Joe Nellis, economic adviser at accountancy MHA, said in emailed comments on Wednesday, citing the energy market and “the long-term pressure of a tight domestic labor market.”
Persistent inflation in the services sector, the dominant part of the U.K. economy, has led money markets to price in almost no chance of an interest rate cut during the Bank of England’s final meeting of the year on Thursday. Those bets were solidified earlier this week when the ONS reported that regular wage growth strengthened to 5.2% over the August-October period, up from 4.9% over July-September.
The November data showed services inflation was unchanged at 5%.
The U.S. Federal Reserve is widely expected to trim rates by a quarter point at its own meeting on Wednesday, taking total cuts of the year to a full percentage point. Some skepticism lingers over whether it should take this step, given inflationary pressures.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated shortly.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell speaks during a news conference following the November 6-7, 2024, Federal Open Market Committee meeting at William McChesney Martin Jr. Federal Reserve Board Building, in Washington, DC, November 7, 2024.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images
Inflation is stubbornly above target, the economy is growing at about a 3% pace and the labor market is holding strong. Put it all together and it sounds like a perfect recipe for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates or at least to stay put.
That’s not what is likely to happen, however, when the Federal Open Market Committee, the central bank’s rate-setting entity, announces its policy decision Wednesday.
Instead, futures market traders are pricing in a near-certainty that the FOMC actually will lower its benchmark overnight borrowing rate by a quarter percentage point, or 25 basis points. That would take it down to a target range of 4.25%-4.5%.
Even with the high level of market anticipation, it could be a decision that comes under an unusual level of scrutiny. A CNBC survey found that while 93% of respondents said they expect a cut, only 63% said it is the right thing to do.
“I’d be inclined to say ‘no cut,'” former Kansas City Fed President Esther George said Tuesday during a CNBC “Squawk Box” interview. “Let’s wait and see how the data comes in. Twenty-five basis points usually doesn’t make or break where we are, but I do think it is a time to signal to markets and to the public that they have not taken their eye off the ball of inflation.”
Inflation indeed remains a nettlesome problem for policymakers.
While the annual rate has come down substantially from its 40-year peak in mid-2022, it has been mired around the 2.5%-3% range for much of 2024. The Fed targets inflation at 2%.
The Commerce Department is expected to report Friday that the personal consumption expenditures price index, the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge, ticked higher in November to 2.5%, or 2.9% on the core reading that excludes food and energy.
Justifying a rate cut in that environment will require some deft communication from Chair Jerome Powell and the committee. Former Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren also recently told CNBC that he would not cut at this meeting.
“They’re very clear about what their target is, and as we’re watching inflation data come in, we’re seeing that it’s not continuing to decelerate in the same manner that it had earlier,” George said. “So that, I think, is a reason to be cautious and to really think about how much of this easing of policy is required to keep the economy on track.”
Fed officials who have spoken in favor of cutting say that policy doesn’t need to be as restrictive in the current environment and they don’t want to risk damaging the labor market.
Chance of a ‘hawkish cut’
If the Fed follows through on the cut, it will mark a full percentage point lopped off the federal funds rate since September.
While that’s a considerable amount of easing in a short period of time, Fed officials have tools at their disposal to let the markets know that future cuts won’t come so easily.
One of those tools is the dot-plot matrix of individual members’ expectations for rates over the next few years. That will be updated Wednesday along with the rest of the Summary of Economic Projections that will include informal outlooks for inflation, unemployment and gross domestic product.
Another is the use of guidance in the post-meeting statement to indicate where the committee sees policy headed. Finally, Powell can use his news conference to provide further clues.
It’s the Powell parley with the media that markets will be watching most closely, followed by the dot plot. Powell recently said the Fed “can afford to be a little more cautious” about how quickly it eases amid what he characterized as a “strong” economy.
“We’ll see them leaning into the direction of travel, to begin the process of moving up their inflation forecast,” said Vincent Reinhardt, BNY Mellon chief economist and former director of the Division of Monetary Affairs at the Fed, where he served 24 years. “The dots [will] drift up a little bit, and [there will be] a big preoccupation at the press conference with the idea of skipping meetings. So it’ll turn out to be a hawkish cut in that regard.”
What about Trump?
Powell is almost certain to be asked about how policy might position in regard to fiscal policy under President-elect Donald Trump.
Thus far, the chair and his colleagues have brushed aside questions about the impact Trump’s initiatives could have on monetary policy, citing uncertainty over what is just talk now and what will become reality later. Some economists think the incoming president’s plans for aggressive tariffs, tax cuts and mass deportations could aggravate inflation even more.
“Obviously the Fed’s in a bind,” Reinhart said. “We used to call it the trapeze artist problem. If you’re a trapeze artist, you don’t leave your platform to swing out until you’re sure your partner is swung out. For the central bank, they can’t really change their forecast in response to what they believe will happen in the political economy until they’re pretty sure there’ll be those changes in the political economy.”
“A big preoccupation at the press conference is going to the idea of skipping meetings,” he added. “So it’ll turn out to be, I think, a hawkish easing in that regard. As [Trump’s] policies are actually put in place, then they may move the forecast by more.”
Other actions on tap
Most Wall Street forecasters see Fed officials raising their expectations for inflation and reducing the expectations for rate cuts in 2025.
When the dot plot was last updated in September, officials indicated the equivalent of four quarter-point cuts next year. Markets already have lowered their own expectations for easing, with an expected path of two cuts in 2025 following the move this week, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch measure.
The outlook also is for the Fed to skip the January meeting. Wall Street is expecting little to no change in the post-meeting statement.
Officials also are likely to raise their estimate for the “neutral” rate of interest that neither boosts nor restricts growth. That level had been around 2.5% for years — a 2% inflation rate plus 0.5% at the “natural” level of interest — but has crept up in recent months and could cross 3% at this week’s update.
Finally, the committee may adjust the interest it pays on its overnight repo operations by 0.05 percentage point in response to the fed funds rate drifting to near the bottom of its target range. The “ON RPP” rate acts as a floor for the funds rate and is currently at 4.55% while the effective funds rate is 4.58%. Minutes from the November FOMC meeting indicated officials were considering a “technical adjustment” to the rate.
A briefcase filled with Iranian rial banknotes sits on display at a currency exchange market on Ferdowsi street in Tehran, Iran, on Saturday, Jan. 6, 2018.
Ali Mohammadi | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Iran is confronting its worst set of crises in years, facing a spiraling economy along with a series of unprecedented geopolitical and military blows to its power in the Middle East.
Over the weekend, Iran’s currency, the rial, hit a record low of 756,000 to the dollar, according to Reuters. Since September, the embattled currency has suffered the ripple effects of devastating hits to Iran’s proxies, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Palestinian militant group Hamas, as well as the November election of Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency.
With the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad amid a shock offensive by rebel groups, Tehran lost its most important ally in the Middle East. Assad, who is accused of war crimes against his own people, fled to Russia and left a highly fractured country behind him.
“The fall of Assad has existential implications for the Islamic Republic,” Behnam ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, told CNBC. “Lest we forget, the regime ahs spent well over a decade in treasure, blood, and reputation to save a regime which ultimately folded in less than two weeks.”
The currency’s fall exposes the extent of the hardship faced by ordinary Iranians, who struggle to afford everyday goods and suffer high inflation and unemployment after years of heavy Western sanctions compounded by domestic corruption and economic mismanagement.
Trump has pledged to take a hard line on Iran and will be re-entering the White House roughly six years after unilaterally pulling the U.S. out of the Iranian nuclear deal and re-imposing sweeping sanctions on the country.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has expressed his government’s willingness to negotiate and revive the deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which lifted some sanctions on Iran in exchange for curbs to its nuclear program. But the attempted outreach comes at a time when the International Atomic Energy Agency says Tehran is enriching uranium at record levels, reaching 60% purity — a short technical step from the weapons-grade purity level of 90%.