Will stopping immigration cause labor shortages?

Will cutting off immigration create labor gaps? I'll gather up-to-date evidence on workforce and industry impacts.

Yes, according to most labor economists, demographic research and recent workforce data, stopping immigration would worsen - and is already worsening - labor shortages in the U.S., particularly in certain sectors. The mechanism is demographics, not just immigration policy:

1. The U.S. workforce is already shrinking without immigration

•Around 2030, deaths are projected to exceed births in the United States, meaning future workforce growth will depend increasingly on immigration. Workforce growth is slowing just as demand for workers continues to rise as population growth slows and more Americans retire.

•The U.S. fertility rate was 1.6 births per woman last year, below the 2.1 replacement rate. We’ve been below that line for decades, and by 2033 the population starts shrinking outright.

•A record 4.18 million Americans turned 65 last year, the highest number ever recorded. They worked, paid in, and earned their retirement. They’re also gone, and there aren’t enough workers left to replace them.

•The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found that without immigration, the U.S. working-age population would have started shrinking in 2012, not 2025. Brookings estimates the population declines by 7 million by 2040 without immigration.

•There are not enough workers available to fill every open position . There are 8.1 million unfilled jobs and 6.9 million workers to fill them.

2. Immigrants are a disproportionate share of the workforce

•Nearly thirty-one million immigrants worked in the United States in 2024, accounting for 19.2 percent of the U.S. civilian workforce. The U.S. foreign-born population had a labor force participation rate of nearly 67 percent, compared to roughly 62 percent for the U.S.-born workforce.

•Most economists say that immigration is good for the U.S. economy because it helps grow the size of the labor force, boost tax revenue, and increase consumer demand.

Immigrants work across industries but greater shares work in service occupations (22 percent); natural resources, construction, and maintenance (13.9 percent); and production, transportation, and material moving (15.5 percent), sectors with chronic labor shortages.

3. Construction and other immigrant-heavy sectors show the effect most clearly

•Declining immigration threatens a key source of construction labor, according to a new research brief from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Immigrants accounted for all net growth in the trades workforce between its post-recession low in 2013 and 2024.

•Foreign-born workers made up 35% of construction trades workers in 2024, compared with 18% of the overall labor force. Their shares exceeded 50% among drywall installers, plasterers, roofers, painters and flooring installers.

•Now, declining immigration and an aging workforce have combined to put pressure on labor demands. Net international migration fell from 2.7 million in 2024 to 1.3 million in 2025. Other analysis found between 2024 and 2025, net migration dropped 77 percent because of policy changes.

•Construction risks mirror care-sector disruptions, with immigrants accounting for 26.3% of the workforce. Legal immigrants are more than 18% of the health care workforce. Agriculture had ~116,200 annual openings with avg farmer age 58.1 yrs, and 68 percent of farm laborers for fiscal year 2021–22 were foreign-born.

•Shortages are particularly acute in industries such as construction, agriculture, health care, and hospitality.

Recent evidence of shortage after slowdown:

•Nationwide, the number of foreign-born workers declined by more than one million between January and August 2025.

•Since the start of 2025, job growth in industries heavily reliant on undocumented labor has been weaker than the rest of the private sector.

•Contractors’ staffing difficulties: 87% of respondents had hourly craft openings. 12% reported workers leaving or failing to appear because of actual or rumored immigration enforcement, while 16% reported subcontractors losing workers.

•Nearly two-thirds of builders said immigration enforcement has impacted their labor force, with some reporting a 70% reduction in available workers for certain jobs.

•The Labor Department warned in October 2025 that the Trump administration’s immigration policies risk creating a labor shortage in the [agriculture] sector.

Projections if immigration is sharply reduced or stopped:

•Policies have reduced the labor force by an estimated 6.8 million workers by 2028.

•Deporting between 1.3 and 8.3 million undocumented immigrants would reduce U.S. real GDP by as much as 7 percent by 2028 while significantly decreasing U.S. employment.

•CBO attributes 40–60% of recent decline in U.S. job growth to immigration changes, and one analysis estimates foreign-born labor force has declined by about 1.2 million people since January.

4. Does stopping immigration help U.S.-born workers fill the gaps?

The administration has argued there is no shortage of American workers. Vice President JD Vance argued limiting immigration will raise wages and create more job opportunities for U.S.-born workers. The administration has contended “There is no shortage of American minds and hands to grow our labor force”.

Research to date does not support automatic replacement:

•Heightened immigration enforcement during the second Trump administration has not expanded job opportunities for U.S.-born workers and is associated with a reduction of employment for U.S.-born men with no more than a high school degree.

•The idea that tighter immigration policy would automatically translate into more jobs for native-born workers is not showing up in the data. A smaller immigrant labor pool does not automatically leave a usable set of jobs waiting for native-born workers.

•The short-term implications of lower immigration levels could lead to noticeable labor force shortages.

The trades workforce is still not where it was before the recession, “But the recovery that it has seen has been because of immigrants”. And 76% of foreign-born trades workers under 30 had arrived within the previous decade, so reduced immigration could weaken the pipeline of younger workers as older workers leave physically demanding jobs.

“There’s going to be difficulty, I think, filling those lower wage occupations if we have a continued decline in immigration,” the Harvard researcher said.

Bottom line

Stopping immigration entirely would not create a uniform shortage overnight across every occupation - higher-paying skilled trades like electrical and plumbing have seen growth in U.S.-born employment - but for the economy as a whole and for lower-wage, physically demanding, and care-related jobs, virtually all net workforce growth in the past decade has come from immigrants. With an aging population, low birth rates, and 8+ million open jobs, removing that inflow would constrain labor supply, raise costs, delay projects, and shrink long-term GDP according to CBO, Brookings, NFAP, and Federal Reserve research.

Alternatives cited - training and retaining more U.S.-born workers, increasing productivity, automation, and raising participation - can help complement but take many years to affect supply, while immigration affects supply within about five years compared to 18 years for a newborn to become a worker.

Citations (5)

1uschamber.comNot yet classified
America ’s Workforce Challenge
Backs: “The mechanism is demographics, not just immigration policy: 1. The U.S. workforce is already shrinking without immigration. Around 2030, deaths are projected to exceed births in the United States, meaning future workforce growth will depend increasingly on immigration.”
2njbiz.comNot yet classified
US workforce has three problems. Immigration is one fix.
Backs: “Workforce growth is slowing just as demand for workers continues to rise as population growth slows and more Americans retire.”
3cfr.orgNonprofits and think tanks
How Does Immigration Affect the U.S. Economy?
Backs: “There are 8.1 million unfilled jobs and 6.9 million workers to fill them. 2. Immigrants are a disproportionate share of the workforce. Nearly thirty-one million immigrants worked in the United States in 2024, accounting for 19.2 percent of the U.S.”
4constructiondive.comNews and media
Amid immigration crackdown, US craft workers increasingly older, foreign-born
Backs: “Declining immigration threatens a key source of construction labor, according to a new research brief from Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.”
5lvb.comNot yet classified
US faces workforce decline as immigration drops 77 percent
Backs: “Now, declining immigration and an aging workforce have combined to put pressure on labor demands. Net international migration fell from 2.7 million in 2024 to 1.3 million in 2025.”