Immigrant Workforce Decline Impacts US Labor

It’s tomato season, and Lidia is one of the many workers harvesting crops on farms in California’s Central Valley.

She lives with a constant unease. Increased attention from U.S. Immigration and Customs enforcement (ICE) could disrupt her life,more than 23 years after she crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally as a teenager.

“What worries me is being stopped while driving and asked for papers,” said Lidia, who spoke with The associated Press on condition that she be identified only by her first name for fear of deportation. “We need to work. We need to feed our families and pay the rent.”

As Labor Day is celebrated with parades and events honoring the contributions of workers, experts say President donald Trump’s strict immigration policies are impacting the country’s workforce.

Preliminary data from the Census Bureau, analyzed by the Pew Research Center, shows more than 1.2 million immigrants have left the U.S. workforce in the first seven months of the year. This includes both legal residents and those without legal authorization.

Immigrants comprise nearly 20% of the U.S. workforce. pew principal investigator Stephanie Kramer notes that 45% of workers in agriculture, fishing, and forestry are immigrants. Approximately 30% of all construction workers are immigrants, as are 24% of service workers.

This loss of immigrant workers coincides with the first decrease in the total immigrant population, after the number of people living in the U.S. without legal permission reached a high of 14 million in 2023.

“It’s not clear how much of the decline we’ve seen since January is due to voluntary departures to seek othre opportunities or to avoid deportation, expulsions, undercounts, or some other technical issue,” said Kramer. “However, we don’t believe the preliminary numbers indicating negative net migration are so far from reality that the decline isn’t real.”

Trump campaigned with the promise of stricter immigration enforcement, and his administration implemented policies designed to reduce both legal and illegal immigration. These policies include increased border security, expanded detention of immigrants, and limitations on asylum claims.

Key Takeaways

• The U.S. workforce has seen a critically important decline in immigrant workers in the first half of 2024.
• Immigrants are a crucial part of several key industries, including agriculture, construction, and service sectors.
• The decrease in the immigrant population is the first recorded as 2023.
• Stricter immigration policies are believed to be a contributing factor to this decline.