Will stopping immigration cause labor shortages?

Stopping immigration touches jobs, wages and shortages — I'll pull the evidence on what would happen to the labor force.

Stopping — or sharply reducing — immigration would very likely cause labor shortages, but the effect is uneven across sectors, regions, and time horizons.

1. Short answer: Yes, according to most labor market research

•Tightened immigration controls are directly linked to growing labor shortages in key sectors of the U.S. economy.

•Groups that track effects estimate a large aggregate impact:

•NFAP projects 6.8 million fewer workers by 2028 and 15.7 million by 2035 due to immigration changes, including 2.8 million fewer workers due to legal immigration changes and 4 million fewer due to illegal immigration policies by 2028.

•Other estimates: Immigration restrictions may reduce the U.S. labor force by 2.1 million people, and a CBO analysis cited projects the labor force will shrink by 15 million jobs by 2035.

•Brookings models say a sudden plunge in immigration will dampen employment, GDP and consumer spending and push sustainable monthly job growth well below historical norms.

In mid-2025, hiring averaged 29,000 jobs per month, down sharply from prior years, at the same time immigrants drove 84.7% of labor force growth since 2019. In 2023, immigrants constituted 18.6% of the U.S. civilian labor force.

2. Why shortages would occur

a) Immigrants are concentrated in industries with persistent vacancies:

•Labor shortages are growing in sectors that rely heavily on immigrant workers, including agriculture, construction, food service, healthcare, and transportation.

•Other estimates detail: immigrant workers comprising 25% of construction labor, 66% of agriculture workers, and 15–28% of healthcare staff.

•Recent reports show shortages already concentrated in agriculture, construction, healthcare and hospitality, producing missed harvests, delayed construction, staffing gaps and slower payroll gains.

b) Demographics — aging and low birth rates:

The U.S. working-age population would have been shrinking without immigration.

•“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”.

•Pew Research projects without immigrants the total U.S. workforce population — those ages 25 to 64 — would fall from 173.2 million in 2015 to 165.6 million in 2035. But if the current rate of immigration remains steady, the number will rise to 183.2 million in 2035.

•Harvard economist Jason Furman noted: With an aging population where people are retiring, where the birth rate is not sufficient for a growing population, were it not for an inflow of immigrants, we would probably have zero or even negative job growth. He added immigrants work at a high rate, and without them there would be very few workers supporting each Social Security beneficiary.

Similar effects are cited for other developed economies: Stopping immigration in Canada would significantly slow population and economic growth, worsen labor shortages, strain social programs due to an aging population, and reduce the tax base.

3. Arguments that shortages could be mitigated or not economy-wide

Not all economists predict widespread, permanent shortages:

•One view: Broadly speaking, economists say they don’t anticipate widespread economic reverberations including labor shortages... out of a labor force of nearly 170 million people.

Potential adjustments cited by critics of high immigration:

•Employers could address labor shortages by importing additional labor rather than recruiting overlooked workers, investing in training, raising wages, or adopting more productive ways of operating.

•Higher wages could draw some U.S.-born workers back into the labor force, and automation, AI, and telehealth may offset labor shortages in the long term.

However, recent data suggests that adjustment has been limited so far: the labor force participation rate among U.S.-born workers aged 16 and older edged down from 61.7% to 61.6%, indicating that native workers are not filling the gap left by departing immigrants.

4. Bottom line

•If immigration were stopped completely: Almost all modeling points to a shrinking workforce, slower GDP growth, fiscal pressure on Social Security/Medicare, and acute shortages in agriculture, construction, hospitality, elder care/healthcare, and some tech/engineering roles.

•If immigration were sharply reduced but not stopped: Shortages would be less severe in aggregate but still likely in low-wage, physically demanding and geographically concentrated jobs that U.S.-born workers are less likely to take, and in high-skill STEM and healthcare roles where the pipeline depends on foreign-trained workers.

•Mitigation is possible but slow and costly: Raising wages, improving training, recruiting non-participants, and automation can reduce need for immigrant labor, but require time, investment, and may raise consumer prices before supply adjusts.

In short, labor markets do adapt, but evidence from the U.S., Canada and Australia suggests that without immigration to offset retirements and low fertility, a smaller and older workforce makes both short-term hiring gaps and long-term economic growth constraints more likely.

Citations (3)

1visaverge.comCommercial content
Will US Immigration Restrictions Lead to a Shrinking Workforce?
Backs: “Stopping — or sharply reducing — immigration would very likely cause labor shortages, but the effect is uneven across sectors, regions, and time horizons. 1. Short answer: Yes, according to most labor market research”
2visaverge.comCommercial content
Employers Say Trump Immigration Policies Are Squeezing the Labor Force
Backs: “Tightened immigration controls are directly linked to growing labor shortages in key sectors of the U.S. economy. Groups that track effects estimate a large aggregate impact:”
3marketplace.orgNews and mediaquality 0.67
Meager job growth partly due to restrictive immigration policy
Backs: “workforce population — those ages 25 to 64 — would fall from 173.2 million in 2015 to 165.6 million in 2035. But if the current rate of immigration remains steady, the number will rise to 183.2 million in 2035. Harvard economist Jason Furman noted: With an aging population where people are retiring, where the birth…”