The ongoing Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids could have major economic effects on the U.S. economy as Latino workers have gone into hiding across the country, according to a data brief released Wednesday by the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute.
Researchers analyzed how Latino immigrants affect the economies of 10 states with some of the largest Latino populations. The study was split evenly between states that tend to vote in line with the Democratic Party and those that align with the Republican Party.
The states examined were: California (Democratic), Texas (Republican), Florida (Republican), New York (Democratic), New Jersey (Democratic), Illinois (Democratic), Arizona (Republican), Georgia (Republican), North Carolina (Republican) and Virginia (Democratic).
Using data from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2023, researchers found that there are 5.7 million Latino immigrants in the workforce of politically blue states and more than 5 million in politically red states.
In the three most populous states in the country, Latino immigrants make up a significantly larger percentage of the labor force. In California and Florida, they make up 16% of the state’s entire labor force and 14% in Texas.
In every state but Florida, the majority of Latino immigrant workers were noncitizens. In Texas, Georgia and North Carolina, noncitizens make up over two-thirds of the Latino workforce.
“Latino immigrants are indispensable to the U.S. economy, because they support industries that are difficult to automate or outsource,” wrote Arturo Vargas Bustamante, one of the authors of the findings in a news release.
“Noncitizens, who we found include the majority of Latino immigrant labor, are a flexible labor force that adapts to the business cycle, particularly during economic growth periods when additional labor is needed. Recent escalation in immigration enforcement puts economies at risk of losing large shares of this workforce, which contributes trillions of dollars to the U.S. GDP.”
Those hard-to-automate industries are the construction, agricultural and service sectors. The growth in Latino immigrant construction workers has far outpaced the general growth of the industry in each of the 10 surveyed states.
Although construction growth has remained stagnant in Illinois over the last 10 years, the Latino immigrant construction labor force has grown by 36% in the same period. In Florida, the immigrant workforce has increased by 71% and by 57% in New Jersey. Texas and Arizona both reported a 26% growth in Latino immigrant laborers. The construction industry has actually shrunk by 3% in New York, but the immigrant workforce has grown by 16%.
California’s agriculture industry is made up predominantly of Latino immigrant laborers at 57%, while in Florida the same population makes up 38% of agriculture workers. One in five of Arizona’s agriculture job holders is a Latino immigrant. Together, this category of worker in the 10 states makes up roughly 35% of all agriculture employees in the country.
Latino immigrants make up 20% or more of all service industry workers in California (25%), New Jersey (22%), Texas (21%) and Florida (20%) — as well as over 10% in New York (17%), Arizona (15%), Illinois (12%) and Virginia (11%).
“These statistics show how integral Latino immigrant labor is to the U.S. economy,” wrote Ahmad Ismail, a research fellow at the LPPI. “They keep U.S. businesses running by filling essential roles, preparing food, maintaining spaces, and supporting our aging adult population.
“Our research also indicates that Latino immigrants are powering construction booms in states like Florida and North Carolina, showing how essential their contributions are across both red and blue states.”
The UCLA study adds to mounting evidence that the Trump administration’s immigration policies are having adverse effects on the U.S. economy.
In October, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office — citing fallout from Trump’s immigration and trade policies — downgraded its forecast for U.S. economic growth this year to 1.4% from the 1.9% it had previously expected and from 2.5% in 2024.
An August Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data found that more than 1.2 million immigrants left the labor force from January 2025 to July 2025. Immigrants of all backgrounds and residency statuses make up almost 20% of the U.S. workforce, and data show 45% of workers in farming, fishing and forestry are immigrants. Additionally, about 30% of all construction work and 24% of service work is handled by the immigrant labor force. Immigrants also make up about 43% of home healthcare aides.
Last month, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas found that Texas businesses are having an increasingly hard time retaining workers in major job sectors due to immigration policies. About 40% of the businesses surveyed in the study reported that employees had missed work due to fear of immigration enforcement. This comes as nearly a quarter of all Texas businesses said they relied on foreign-born labor, up from 15% last year.
In July, a UC Merced study showed that more than 7% of the nearly 2.5 million noncitzen workers in California didn’t go to work compared with June. ICE activity in the state ramped up beginning in June. Overall, more than 3% of the state’s total work population was absent from work over the examined period.
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