As millions of Americans gather Monday to celebrate Labor Day, federal data shows how President Trump’s immigration policies are reshaping the U.S. workforce.
The number of immigrant workers in the U.S. has declined by 1.2 million from January through the end of July, according to preliminary Census Bureau data, analyzed by the Pew Research Center. That figure includes people who are in the country illegally as well as legal residents.
The labor market shakeup comes as the flow of immigrants into the U.S. has slowed significantly under Mr. Trump, who campaigned on a promise to deport millions of immigrants working illegally. He has said he is focusing deportation efforts on “dangerous criminals,” but most people detained by ICE have no criminal convictions. At the same time, the number of illegal border crossings has plunged under his policies.
The overall number of people in the U.S. illegally peaked at an estimated 14 million in 2023, according to a Pew Research Center estimate. However, the number of unauthorized immigrants has likely declined since then “due in part to increased deportations and reduced protections under the Trump administration,” the authors of the Pew Research Center report said.
In an Aug. 28 report, Oxford Economics projects the slowdown will persist through Mr. Trump’s presidency, with net immigration falling to an annualized 500,000 by year-end and holding at that level until 2028.
Immigrants make up almost 20% of the U.S. workforce, and data shows 45% of workers in farming, fishing and forestry are immigrants, according to Pew senior researcher Stephanie Kramer. About 30% of all construction workers are immigrants and 24% of service workers are immigrants, she added.
“It’s unclear how much of the decline we’ve seen since January is due to voluntary departures to pursue other opportunities or avoid deportation, removals, underreporting or other technical issues,” Kramer said. “However, we don’t believe that the preliminary numbers indicating net-negative migration are so far off that the decline isn’t real.”
To be sure, the loss of immigrant workers reflects a small share of the overall U.S. labor force of more than 171 million workers. But the decline could affect states and sectors that are more dependent on foreign workers, economists say.
Potential implications for the labor market
Immigrants play a key role in alleviating labor shortages, as the majority tend to be ages 25 to 54, Oxford Economics noted. Economists call that demographic “prime working age” because they tend to be in their most productive decades of work.
Immigrants are also more willing to migrate to states with higher labor demand.
“This is critical to ease shortages in regional labor markets, especially as U.S. labor mobility has steadily declined since the 1980s,” Oxford Economics researchers noted.
However, states with large shares of undocumented residents — namely Louisiana, Florida and New York — are starting to see some of the biggest declines in unauthorized migration, the report says.
Experts say the drop in workforce participation could ripple through the labor market, which is already under some strain as employers pull back on hiring. The average monthly payroll gain from May to July was only 35,000, down from an average of 123,000 from for the first four months of the year.
“The influx across the border from what we can tell is essentially stopped, and that’s where we were getting millions and millions of migrants over the last four years,” said Pia Orrenius, a labor economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. “That has had a huge impact on the ability to create jobs.”
Immigrants normally contribute at least 50% of job growth in the U.S., according to Orrenius.
The plunge in unauthorized immigration may also give the impression that the labor force is tighter than it actually is due to the higher ratio of job vacancies to unemployed workers, Oxford Economics said. That could muddy the picture of what’s going on in the labor market, the authors say.
“The Fed is highly sensitive to the downside risks to the labor market, but the immigration reversal will continue to complicate the signals from the labor market data,” they write.
ICE raids take a toll on farms
Just across the border from Mexico in McAllen, Texas, corn and cotton fields are about ready for harvesting. Elizabeth Rodriguez worries there won’t be enough workers available for the gins and other machinery once the fields are cleared.
Immigration enforcement actions at farms, businesses and construction sites brought everything to a standstill, said Rodriguez, director of farmworker advocacy for the National Farmworker Ministry.
“In May, during the peak of our watermelon and cantaloupe season, it delayed it. A lot of crops did go to waste,” she said.
In Ventura County, California, northwest of Los Angeles, Lisa Tate manages her family business that grows citrus fruits, avocados and coffee on eight ranches and 800 acres (323 hectares).
Most of the men and women who work their farms are contractor-provided day laborers. There were days earlier this year when crews would be smaller. Tate is hesitant to place that blame on immigration policies. But the fear of ICE raids spread quickly.
Dozens of area farmworkers were arrested late this spring.
“People were being taken out of laundromats, off the side of the road,” Tate said.
Lidia, a farmworker who spoke to the AP through an interpreter, said her biggest fear is being sent back to Mexico. Now 36, she is married with three school-age children who were born here.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to bring my kids,” said Lidia. “I’m also very concerned I’d have to start from zero. My whole life has been in the United States.”
Construction sites in and around McAllen also “are completely dead,” Rodriguez said.
“We have a large labor force that is undocumented,” she said. “We’ve seen ICE particularly targeting construction sites and attempting to target mechanic and repair shops.”
Construction jobs
The number of construction jobs are down in about half of U.S. metropolitan areas, according to an Associated General Contractors of America analysis of government employment data. The largest loss of 7,200 jobs was in the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, California, area. The Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale area lost 6,200 jobs.
“Construction employment has stalled or retreated in many areas for a variety of reasons,” said Ken Simonson, the association’s chief economist. “But contractors report they would hire more people if only they could find more qualified and willing workers and tougher immigration enforcement wasn’t disrupting labor supplies.”
This may just be the tip of the iceberg: The Oxford report authors say that the increase in funding for immigration enforcement from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act could eventually lead to an “even higher sustained rate of deportations.”
Kramer, with Pew, warns about the potential impact on health care. She says immigrants make up about 43% of home health care aides.
The Service Employees International Union represents about 2 million workers in health care, the public sector and property services. An estimated half of long-term care workers who are members of SEIU 2015 in California are immigrants, said Arnulfo De La Cruz, the local’s president.
“What’s going to happen when millions of Americans can no longer find a home care provider?” De La Cruz said. “What happens when immigrants aren’t in the field to pick our crops? Who’s going to staff our hospitals and nursing homes?”
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