US labor market conditions and migration: a reassessment of Bahar (2025)

TL;DR

This paper reevaluates Bahar (2025) and finds that the claimed long-term relationship between US labor market conditions and migration is unsupported when proper statistical methods are used, challenging previous conclusions.

Contribution

It corrects the methodological approach of Bahar (2025), demonstrating that the original findings were based on a misspecified test, and clarifies the true nature of the relationship.

Findings

No evidence of a cointegrating relationship when proper tests are applied

The original paper's conclusions are invalidated by correct methodology

The relationship between US labor market and migration remains unclear

Abstract

Bahar (2025) argues that there is a long-term cointegrating relationship between US job vacancies and southwest border crossings. We show that this conclusion is based on a misspecified Engle-Granger test applied to first differences. Once the Engle-Granger test is correctly applied to levels, evidence for a cointegrating relationship vanishes, invalidating the paper's approach to estimating short- and long-run elasticities. Bahar's approach is therefore uninformative about the relationship between US labor market conditions and migration.