A majority of Alabama’s politicians apparently believe that they can improve their state economy by chasing away the undocumented workers who live there. By making them criminals (turning them into illegal aliens), denying them basic services like water and electricity, and terrifying their families, they hope to rid the state of people they see as a burden on taxpayers and competitors for scarce jobs. Well, after a year’s application of this medicine (June marks the first anniversary of the passage of HB 56), how’s the experiment coming along? Has the economy been jump-started or even improved?

Apparently not.

Let’s start with job creation. Has Alabama created more jobs than its neighbors over the last year? No; in fact, it’s both below the regional average and well below the national average. Alabama’s employment growth has been only one-seventh the national average (0.2 percent vs. 1.4 percent). The United States has regained about 43 percent of the jobs lost at the bottom of the recession; Alabama has only recovered about 9 percent of the jobs it lost.

^{Figure 1: Source: EPI analysis of Local Area Unemployment Statistics public data sets}

Has it made the state or its workers richer or better off? No, apparently not. Even with fewer workers, personal income per worker fell in Alabama during the two quarters that followed enactment of HB 56, while in the neighboring states, it was unchanged.

^{Figure 2: Source: EPI analysis of Current Employment Statistics and Bureau of Economic Analysis National Income and Product Accounts public data}

How about unemployment? Has chasing away all of those immigrants opened up tens of thousands of existing jobs for native Alabamans and cut the number of unemployed more than Alabama’s neighbors? No, not exactly. Compared to all four of its neighboring states (Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, and Florida), Alabama’s unemployment fell a little faster over the past year—2 percentage points vs 1.7 percentage points—but Alabama lost 52,000 workers from its labor force in less than a year while the labor force grew in the four neighboring states. Alabama doesn’t have a positive story to tell.

^{Figure 3: Source: EPI analysis Local Area Unemployment Statistics public data series}

Far from being an economic panacea, the early returns suggest that HB 56 has not been good for Alabamans in terms of job creation or personal income. Immigrant-bashing isn’t the path to prosperity.