So here’s where we’re at: In just 50 days, ICE has arrested 32,809 people. That’s wild when you consider they made 33,242 arrests in all of fiscal year 2024. But here’s the thing that should make everyone pay attention, regardless of where you stand on immigration: this is about to mess with the economy in some pretty serious ways.
We’re looking at losing up to 225,000 agricultural workers and 1.5 million construction workers. And before anyone says “great, more jobs for Americans,” hold up—the math doesn’t work that way. For every half a million immigrants removed from the workforce, we actually lose 44,000 jobs for U.S.-born workers, not to mention that immigrant worker often will do jobs for cheaper than American workers. The undocumented population makes up nearly 5% of the entire U.S. workforce. That’s about 11 million people, are currently doing jobs that keep things running.
The economic projections are pretty sobering. We’re talking about GDP potentially dropping by 7.4% by 2028 in worst-case scenarios. Even the “not so bad” estimates show we’ll lose $30 to $110 billion in economic growth just this year. Construction is going to get hit hard. They had 282,000 job openings in September 2024, and experts say they need 454,000 additional workers just to keep up with demand. Removing workers from an industry that’s already short-staffed? Michael Marsh from the National Council of Agricultural Employers points out that about 950,000 of the country’s 2.2 million farm workers are undocumented. Translation: your already high grocery bill is about to become a lot worse
Restaurants are going to feel the squeeze too. When you can’t find workers, you have to pay more to attract them. When businesses pay more for labor, they charge customers more. It’s not rocket science. The Peterson Institute ran the numbers and found that in a high-deportation scenario, prices could jump up 9%. They also calculated that mass deportations could reduce national wage and salary income by $317.2 billion—that’s 2.7% of all labor income. For context, that’s a bigger hit than what we saw during the recessions of 1980, 1991, and 2002.
George Mason University economist Michael Clemens puts it bluntly: mass deportations will reduce job opportunities for U.S. workers, slow economic growth, spike inflation, and increase budget deficits. In other words, higher taxes and higher prices for everyone.
Whether you think this enforcement surge is necessary or not, the economic reality is pretty clear: we’re all going to feel this in our wallets. And what we’re seeing now? This is just the opening act of what could become one of the most economically disruptive domestic policies in recent memory.
The numbers don’t lie, even when the politics get messy.
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