Newspapers do not usually out-and-out lie to us, but sometimes you have to look beyond what they tell you, to see what they don’t.
We have pointed out, several times, that it is illegal to work in the United States unless you are a citizen or have the appropriate legal documents. In the last linked article, referencing a Philadelphia Inquirer sob story about an illegal immigrant identified only by her surname Guzman we pointed out:
Miss Guzman doesn’t have a husband or boyfriend living with her, so there’s (probably) no real, legal financial support there. That leaves four possibilities:
- Miss Guzman presented forged documents saying she was eligible to work in the United States, which is a felony;
- Miss Guzman’s employer hired her knowing that she did not have the proper documents, which would be a felony by both Miss Guzman and the employer;
- Miss Guzman is living off welfare, for which she is ineligible, and would have had to have presented forged documents to the social workers, a felony; or
- Miss Guzman has been working for cash, which means she is evading income and Social Security taxes, which is a felony.
Saturday’s Inquirer noted that a lot of the illegals in the City of Brotherly Love are probably engaging in a least some of the time in option number four:
Philly’s gig economy runs on immigrant workers. Now that labor pool is shrinking amid tougher ICE enforcement.
A new analysis by the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia says the city’s gig economy faces a reckoning.
by Jeff Gammage | Saturday, March 28, 2026 | 5:01 AM EDT
Are you waiting longer for the rideshare driver to show up? Or for that burger and fries to be delivered to your door? Does it all cost more?
Here’s part of the reason: stricter immigration enforcement. And not just the arrest and deportation of workers who lack official permission to be in the country, but the fear that those arrests have engendered among others, dissuading them from taking similar gig jobs. That as legal pathways into the country for other immigrant workers have been curtailed.
A new analysis by the Economy League of Greater Philadelphia says the city’s gig economy faces a reckoning. It runs on immigrant workers, but the Trump administration’s effort to carry out the largest deportation campaign in U.S. history is shrinking the labor pool.
“The demand [for gig services] is not going away,” said Jeff Hornstein, executive director of the Economy League. “The fact that we have so many foreign-born workers in this country, and so many of them are under threat, it’s inevitably going to drive costs up or services down.”
There’s more at the original.
So, what is the “gig economy”?
(T)he gig economy is a labor market made up of freelance or part-time workers who work a “gig” to supplement their income or simply work as they wish.
It’s easy to join this labor market because jobs or tasks are usually accepted through an online app or platform.
In the US, the gig economy has provided millions of people with the ability to work independently and is projected to increase in years to come.
Translation: these are people working without regular employment, people paid either in cash (less probably) or by a check, but without deductions withheld for taxes. If paid by check, an employer is supposed to issue them a Form 1099, if the “individual contractor” has been paid more than $600 over the year, showing the amount paid to the individual, but if an individual has six “gigs”, there is no particular reason he could choose to report only three or four. If the individual has not provided a legitimate Social Security or Tax ID number, the government might not be able to track him. Gig jobs like the delivery job Mr Gammage used as an example frequently get tips in cash rather than as part of their bill.
It’s easy to see why an “independent contractor” would under-report. The Social Security/Medicare tax rate in 7.65% for both the employer and employee, but a gig worker who was just paid what he earned is responsible for both, a 15.3% tax on all income received. How many people can pony up 15.3% of their total earnings once a year, in the spring? For every $10.00 they can under-report results in $1.53 in taxes they don’t have to send the Infernal Revenue Service.
For every $1000.00 they can underreport, that’s $153.00 they avoid sending the government. For someone delivering for Door Dash or some other service, $153.00 is probably real money, and that’s an encouragement to cheat.
ICE does not release local figures, but nationally, arrests of immigrants are surging. Those arrests, detentions, and deportations, and the fear among immigrant workers that they could be next, is subtracting people from the labor force. That and the reduction of humanitarian-entry programs and new limits on work sponsorship mean there are simply fewer workers available, as the national, foreign-born labor force has declined by an estimated 750,000 people since President Donald Trump took office in January 2025.
Hmmm. I would have hoped that number would have been higher. As we have previously reported, the Inquirer has reported an illegal immigrant population of between 47,000 and 76,000 people just in Philly.
Mr Gammage’s story was intended to convey to readers that immigration enforcement is pushing up inflation; he might not have intended to point out that the gig workers, which even he pointed out that “Gig platforms are among the last accessible labor markets for undocumented workers, because the E-Verify system generally does not apply there,” might be evading taxes. All it takes is reading his story closely, to see what he told readers, and what he didn’t.
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