Government data show the Trump administration’s immigration policies reducing the number of foreign-born workers did not help U.S.-born workers in 2025. The latest data indicate a substantial drop in foreign-born workers did not translate into better labor market outcomes for U.S.-born workers or encourage more workers to enter the labor force. The U.S.-born unemployment rate increased over the past 12 months. Trump officials, including White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, predicted fewer immigrant workers would produce significant benefits for U.S.-born workers.
Immigration Policies Reduced The Supply Of Foreign-Born Workers In 2025
The latest jobs report confirms what other monthly reports showed in 2025: Fewer foreign-born workers are in the U.S. labor force due to the Trump administration’s policies on legal and illegal immigration. “The Bureau of Labor Statistics household survey shows a decline of 881,000 foreign-born workers since the start of the Trump administration in January 2025, and a drop of 1.3 million since a peak in March 2025,” according to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis.
The NFAP analysis notes the drop in the size of the immigrant labor force represents a shock for the U.S. economy but is even larger when compared to the expected level. In their assumptions, the Congressional Budget Office and the Social Security Administration expected approximately 1.3 million more foreign-born workers in 2025, which would create a gap of more than 2 million expected workers once 810,000 fewer foreign-born workers in the latest BLS data are added.
Why is labor force growth essential? Economic growth, which raises a country’s living standards, relies on labor force growth and productivity growth, and immigrants are essential to both, particularly given their role in boosting productivity and America’s aging workforce. Immigrant workers accounted for more than half of U.S. labor force growth between 2014 and 2024.
“The Trump administration’s policies on illegal and legal immigration would reduce the projected number of workers in the United States by 6.8 million by 2028 and by 15.7 million by 2035 and lower the annual rate of economic growth by almost one-third,” according to an October 2025 NFAP analysis.
U.S.-Born Workers Have Not Benefited From The Administration’s Immigration Policies
According to Stephen Miller and other Trump officials, deporting foreign-born workers and restricting legal immigration would benefit U.S. workers. “In one meeting during the 2024 campaign, Mr. Trump said that if it was up to Mr. Miller there would be only 100 million people in this country, and they would all look like Mr. Miller, according to a person with knowledge of the comment,” reported The New York Times.
Miller’s theory, based largely on what economists call the “lump of labor fallacy” or the belief that an economy holds only a fixed number of jobs, has hit head-on with reality. Reducing the labor supply has not benefited U.S. workers.
“There is no evidence that U.S.-born workers have benefited from the decline in foreign-born workers,” according to the NFAP analysis. “The unemployment rate for U.S.-born workers was 4.1% in December 2025 compared to 3.7% in December 2024.” That represents an 11% increase over a 12-month period. NFAP notes the 12-month comparison is the most valid because BLS does not seasonally adjust its estimates by nativity. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for all workers in the economy rose from 4.0% in January 2025 to 4.4% in December 2025.
“The unemployment and labor force participation rates show fewer of the U.S.-born being able to find jobs and fewer even bothering to look,” said labor economist Mark Regets, an NFAP senior fellow, in an interview.
Regets is correct that government data show U.S. workers have not reentered the labor market in response to the withdrawal of foreign-born workers, even though immigration critics argued that would happen. NFAP notes the labor force participation rate for the U.S.-born aged 16 and older fell from 61.4% in December 2024 to 61.2% in December 2025, while the seasonally adjusted labor force participation rate for all individuals aged 16 or older dropped during the same period.
Several factors explain why the decline in foreign-born labor did not create an economic boon for U.S. workers in 2025 and will be unlikely to do so in the future. First, when business owners and potential entrepreneurs find an insufficient number of workers, they scale back or abandon plans to invest or expand, which can lead to fewer jobs for U.S. workers. Second, immigrants create jobs through their consumer spending on food, housing and other items. Third, immigrants foster job creation by starting new businesses, and their availability in the labor market may encourage businesses to keep work in the United States rather than outsourcing overseas.
According to Regets, “Immigrants help exports, create jobs as consumers, fill niches in the labor market and produce dynamism for the U.S. economy that wouldn’t be there.”
Economists, backed by decades of data, note that it is incorrect to assume fewer immigrants are necessary to create more opportunity for U.S. workers or that increasing immigration or growing the labor supply in other ways will mean fewer jobs for Americans. “The amount of economic activity in the United States is not fixed,” said Mark Regets. “Otherwise, when soldiers came back from World War II, we would have had mass unemployment rather than an economic expansion.”
Reposted from Forbes
