White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller talks to reporters outside of the White House West Wing on May 9, 2025. A decline in the foreign-born labor force has not improved the fortunes of U.S.-born workers, contrary to the promises of Trump officials. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
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A decline in the foreign-born labor force has not improved the fortunes of U.S.-born workers, contrary to the promises of Trump officials. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has praised the 1924 Immigration Act, which prevented Jews and many other Europeans from immigrating to America before the rise of fascism in the 1930s, as the type of immigration approach that would produce gains for U.S. workers. However, the significant drop in foreign-born workers to the United States in 2025 has not made U.S. workers better off and instead has contributed to concerns about a stagnating economy.
Immigration Policies Have Led To Fewer Foreign-Born Workers
The Trump administration weathered another disappointing U.S. jobs report when the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced on September 5, 2025, that total nonfarm payroll employment rose by only 22,000 in August. The total seasonally adjusted labor force has increased by only 34,000 since January 2025 and has decreased by 357,000 since its peak in April 2025.
“The loss of immigrant workers and immigrant consumers is a major cause of slow job growth,” said labor economist Mark Regets, a senior fellow at the National Foundation for American Policy, in an interview. “Immigrants both create demand for the goods and services produced by U.S.-born workers and work alongside them in ways that increase productivity for both groups.”
The number of foreign-born workers in the U.S. labor force has declined by 1.1 million between January and August 2025, according to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The number of foreign-born workers fell by 1.5 million from a peak in March 2025.
The drop in foreign-born workers should not be measured only against an assumption of zero growth. NFAP found that from 2014 to 2024, the average annual growth in the foreign-born labor force was 652,000 a year. Over eight months, that would equal an increase of more than 400,000. In other words, one might have expected about 400,000 more foreign-born workers in the U.S. labor force in August 2025 rather than 1.1 million fewer.
Even though Stephen Miller and other administration advocates of less immigration have argued that fewer foreign-born workers in the U.S. labor force would translate into improving the lives of U.S.-born workers, there is no evidence that U.S.-born workers are better off. The unemployment rate among U.S. workers has increased from 4.3% to 4.6% between January and August 2025. The seasonally adjusted U.S. unemployment rate rose from July to August 2025.
It also does not appear U.S.-born workers are entering the U.S. labor force in large numbers as foreign-born workers exit. While the labor force participation rate for the U.S.-born aged 15 and older is slightly higher since January, it has declined from 61.7% in August 2024 to 61.6% in August 2025. NFAP found that, examining each age group separately, the U.S.-born labor force participation is already at or near all-time highs. The only exception is for U.S.-born individuals under the age of 25, but such individuals are at an all-time high once one includes being in school.
“The decline in the foreign-born portion of the labor force is due to policies on deportation and actions that remove previously authorized workers from the lawful workforce, such as ending humanitarian parole programs and Temporary Protected Status, as well as policies on legal immigration, including the blocking of up to 125,000 new refugee admissions,” according to the NFAP analysis. “These actions may have also affected or discouraged immigrants not directly impacted by the policy changes.”
Federal agents block people protesting an ICE immigration raid at a nearby licensed cannabis farm on July 10, 2025, near Camarillo, California. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
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Immigration Research Shows U.S.-Born Workers Unlikely To Benefit From Fewer Immigrants
A large body of research finds it unlikely that a drop in foreign-born workers will produce economic gains for U.S. workers. The research examined past episodes of lower legal immigration and increased deportations.
In 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Trump administration issued a proclamation that blocked the entry of H-1B, H-2B, L-1 and most J-1 temporary visa holders through December 31, 2020. Miller and others at the time assured Americans that the measure would help American workers. That proved to be untrue.
In an NFAP study, University of North Florida economics professor Madeline Zavodny concluded that the Covid-19 pandemic and Trump administration policies, including the proclamation, reduced H-1B and J-1 visas but did not help U.S. workers. “The drop in H-2B program admissions did not boost labor market opportunities for U.S. workers but rather, if anything, worsened them.”
In 2018, Zavodny looked at unemployment and labor force participation rates. “The results of the state-level analysis indicate that immigration does not increase U.S. natives’ [U.S.-born] unemployment or reduce their labor force participation,” according to the research. “Instead, having more immigrants reduces the unemployment rate and raises the labor force participation rate of U.S. natives within the same sex and education group.”
To help explain these results, Zavodny pointed to other economic research showing that immigrants can help create and preserve jobs, noting, “Immigrants may boost consumer demand, start their own businesses and reduce offshoring.” She cited research by Gihoon Hong (Indiana University) and John McLaren (University of Virginia) that concluded each additional immigrant creates 1.2 local jobs for local workers, mostly U.S.-born workers, by increasing consumer demand for local services. Research by Jennifer Hunt and others has found immigrants are more likely than the U.S. born to start or own a company.
A 2024 analysis of past deportation efforts for the Peterson Institute for International Economics by George Mason University economics professor Michael Clemens predicted U.S. workers would not benefit if the Trump administration attempted to remove immigrant workers from the labor force. “The answer is that the U.S. labor market is more complex than the cartoon economy in the minds of some politicians, who think that business owners faced with a loss of immigrant workers will simply hire native [U.S.-born] workers to replace them,” according to Clemens. Among other factors, “Business owners hit by sudden reductions to labor supply invest less in new business formation.”
Reducing the labor supply, including by enacting more restrictive immigration policies, will likely lead to lower levels of economic growth, which means less job creation and dynamism in the U.S. economy. Economist Mark Regets said, “While it is just one factor, we should not be surprised that opportunities for U.S.-born workers are falling at the same time an estimated one million fewer immigrants are in the labor force.”