Stopping immigration — would it trigger labor shortages? I'll pull the latest research on how immigration ties to workforce supply.
Stopping immigration would very likely worsen labor shortages, especially in the short term and in specific sectors, according to most economic research, though the effect is not uniform across the entire economy.
1. How much does immigration contribute to the labor supply?
•In 2023, immigrants constituted 18.6% of the U.S. civilian labor force, and more broadly represent nearly 1 in 5 U.S. workers.
•That share is concentrated in industries with already high vacancy rates:
•With immigrant workers comprising 25% of construction labor, 66% of agriculture workers, and 15–28% of healthcare staff
•Other estimates: 45% of farmworkers, 30% of construction workers, 24% of service workers, and 43% of home health aides
•Undocumented immigrants make up 5% of the U.S. workforce, rising to 10%+ in construction and agriculture, and 7% in home health care
•Immigrants fill both low-skilled jobs that complement native-born U.S. workers and high-skilled jobs where domestic supply falls short of demand
Because of this concentration, an immigration crackdown could tighten the labor market, increasing wages but risking labor shortages and inflation in key sectors, and research notes that tightened immigration controls are directly linked to growing labor shortages in key sectors of the U.S. economy.
2. Short-term consequences of a sudden stop
•A sudden plunge in immigration reduces the labor force available to fill jobs that businesses expect to fill, which Brookings models say will dampen employment, GDP, and consumer spending and push sustainable monthly job growth well below historical norms—perhaps to 20,000–50,000 or even negative territory in 2026
•Estimates of the scale:
•Immigration restrictions may reduce the U.S. labor force by 2.1 million people
•The CBO projects that reduced immigration will shrink the labor force by 15 million jobs by 2035 according to analysis
•The Trump administration itself filing noted: "The near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens combined with the lack of an available legal workforce,'' results in significant disruptions to production costs and (threatens) the stability of domestic food production and again
•Early evidence from recent enforcement surges:
•The Trump administration's immigration surge resulted in 668,000 job losses, creating a "chilling effect"
•Reduced immigration contributes to labor shortages, driving inflationary pressures as the supply of immigrant-dependent goods and services shrinks
Models show indiscriminate immigration restrictions or large-scale deportation efforts will shrink the U.S. economy and hurt native-born and immigrant residents alike, as more immigration increases the U.S. labor force, enhances productivity, and grows the economy, while a mass deportation could permanently shrink the U.S. economy by as much as 6 percent.
Historical case studies also show shortages do not automatically create opportunities for native workers:
•The "bracero exclusion" in 1964, which removed nearly half-a-million Mexican agricultural workers, did not result in the promised boost to native-born farm wages and employment. Instead, jobs were either replaced by machines or eliminated entirely
•The Secure Communities enforcement between 2008 and 2014 was found to reduce the employment share of native-born workers, with harms concentrated among workers in sectors that relied on immigrant labor
3. Long-term demographic driver
Without immigration, the U.S. faces a shrinking, aging workforce, making shortages more structural:
•Without immigration, the U.S. population would begin to shrink by 2030, with other projections putting that point at 2033, meaning immigration would become the sole driver of population growth from that point forward
•"Our working age population is only growing today because immigrants are coming to the United States and because of the children of prior waves of immigrants... If it weren't for them, our working age population, our labor force, would actually be shrinking."
•Without immigration, prime-age labor force growth will likely continue to slow and turn negative around 2042
•Economists note: "without the immigration surge of 2022 to 2024, the US working-age population would have been shrinking. The prime-age labor force grew in large part because of immigration"
•"The United States is aging, and immigrants, on average, are more likely to be of prime working age than native-born Americans... immigration will soon become the primary mechanism keeping the population and the labor force growing. Without it, the U.S. will not just be facing a tighter labor market, but a shrinking one."
The Congressional Budget Office has increased its official projections of long-run GDP growth by $7 trillion to account for an estimated increase in immigration, underscoring how central immigration is to growth assumptions.
4. Counter-arguments and nuances
Not all economists predict widespread, economy-wide shortages:
•"Broadly speaking, economists say they don't anticipate widespread economic reverberations including labor shortages... This is out of a labor force of nearly 170 million people"
Historical evidence on substitution:
•Evidence from South Korea suggests that getting rid of low-wage immigration does not mean that the natives see an increase in demand for their labor, as in better pay or higher levels of employment. Instead, businesses find a way to make do or sometimes manage to get locals to perform the tasks at the same low wages
•Study of the 1920s U.S. border closure found that in areas with more missing immigrants, the border closure did not increase the wages of native workers... findings suggest that immigration restrictions led to substitution toward other sources of labor (e.g., internal migrants) and substitutable capital
In the long run, employers may adjust through automation, internal migration, higher wages to attract native workers, offshoring, or reducing output - which can mean fewer shortages in the statistical sense but at the cost of lower production, higher prices, and slower GDP growth.
Bottom line: Cutting off immigration would likely intensify labor shortages in agriculture, construction, hospitality, and health care/social assistance where immigrants are most concentrated, and would accelerate a demographic squeeze as baby boomers retire. Economy-wide, it would shrink the overall labor force and dampen employment growth, rather than create more jobs for native-born workers, but the impact would be sector-specific and could be partially offset over time by automation and labor reallocation rather than resulting in uniform shortages across all 170 million workers.