WASHINGTON — This is what Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump promises the largest deportation event the US has ever seen if elected — a promise he has based in part on the idea that immigrants in the U.S., legal and illegal, are stealing what he calls “black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs.”
But government data shows that migrant workers contribute to economic growth and provide promotion opportunities for native workers. And a mass deportation would cost American taxpayers up to a trillion dollars and could cause the cost of living, including food and housing, to skyrocket, economists say.
Here’s a look at immigration and the US labor market, and what Trump’s plan would mean for the US economy.
Trump, who often uses anti-immigrant rhetoric, has referred during his campaign to immigrants who he says are taking “black jobs” and “Hispanic jobs.”
At a recent rally in Reading, Pennsylvania, Trump said: “You have an invasion of people in our country.”
“They’re going to attack black jobs — and they’re already doing that — and Hispanic jobs, and they’re also going to attack union jobs,” Trump said. “So when you see the line, it’s not just about the crime. Your jobs will be taken away too.”
Trump’s rhetoric on jobs has been that too widely condemned by Democrats and black leaders calling it a racist and offensive way to imply that black and Hispanic Americans are taking menial jobs.
Janiyah Thomas, the director of Team Trump Black Media, told The Associated Press that Democrats “continue to prioritize the interests of illegal immigrants over our own Black Americans born in this country” and that the Biden era job profit on the labor market were mainly the result of illegal immigration.
The newest Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Current Population Survey shows that as of 2023, native Black workers are most likely to be employed in management and finance, sales and office support positions, while native Latino workers are most likely to be employed in management, office support, sales and service roles.
Foreign-born, non-resident black workers are most often represented in support roles in the transportation and healthcare industries, and foreign-born, non-resident Hispanic workers are most often represented in construction, buildings, and site cleaning.
In 2023, international migrants—primarily from Latin America—were responsible for more than two-thirds of population growth in the United States, and so far this decade they account for nearly three-quarters of U.S. growth.
After reaching a record high in December 2023, the number of migrants crossing the border has plummeted.
The claim that immigrants take jobs away from native Americans is echoed by Trump’s advisers. They often cite a report by Steven Camarota, research director at the Center for Immigration Studies, a right-wing think tank that aims to reduce immigration flows into the US. The report combines employment figures for immigrants in the US, legal and illegal, to strengthen the position of immigrants in the US. argue that foreigners are disproportionately driving U.S. labor growth and reaping most of the benefits.
Camarota’s report said 971,000 more U.S.-born Americans were employed in May 2024 compared to May 2019, before the pandemic, while the number of working immigrants increased by 3.2 million.
It is true that international migrants have become one of the main drivers of population growth this decade, increasing their share of the total population as fewer children are born in the US than in recent years. This is evident from the US Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey.
Economists who study the impact of immigrant labor on the economy say people who are in the U.S. illegally don’t take jobs from native citizens because the roles these immigrant workers take on are usually positions that native workers are unwilling to fill, such as farming . and food processing jobs.
Giovanni Peri, a labor economist at the University of California, Davis, conducted research on the impact of the 1980 influx of Cuban immigrants into Miami (the so-called Mariel Boatlift) on the employment of black workers. The study found that wages for black and Hispanic workers in Miami were higher than in other cities that did not see a wave of immigrant workers.
Peri told the AP that the presence of new immigrant labor often improves employment outcomes for native workers, who often have different language and skills than new immigrants.
Furthermore, there is no fixed number of jobs in the US, immigrants typically contribute to the survival of existing businesses (creating new opportunities for native workers), and there are currently more jobs available than there are workers available to take them to take. American natives have little interest in working in labor-intensive agricultural and food production positions.
“We have many more vacancies than workers in this type of manual labor, in fact we need many more to fill these roles,” Peri said.
Stan Marek, who employs about a thousand workers at his Houston construction company, Marek Brothers Holdings LLCsaid he has seen this firsthand.
Asked whether immigrants in the US are illegally taking jobs from native workers, he said: “Absolutely not, unequivocally.”
“Many of my employees are retiring and their children are not going to get into the construction and trades,” Marek said. He added that the US needs an identification system that takes into account national security concerns so that those in the country illegally can work. .
“There are not enough workers here,” he said.
Data also shows that if there are not enough workers to fill these positions, companies will automate their jobs with machines and technology investments, rather than turning to indigenous workers.
Economist Ethan Lewis of Dartmouth University said: “There has been a huge amount of research on the impact of immigration on the US labor market, most of which concludes that the impact on lower-skilled workers is quite small and, if anything, on employment for U.S.-born workers.” workers could be created rather than ‘taken’ by immigrants.”
Trump has said he would focus on rounding up migrants by deploying the National Guard, whose troops can be activated on a governor’s order.
Peri says a deportation program would cost the US up to a trillion dollars and cause huge losses to the US economy. The cost of food and other basic items would skyrocket.
“They contribute enormously to our economy and we wouldn’t have fruits and vegetables, we wouldn’t have our gardens,” he said, if the deportation efforts came to fruition.
Because the U.S. illegal labor force makes up about 4% of U.S. GDP annually, he estimates that mass deportation would result in a loss of about $1 trillion.
“It’s a staggering cost in terms of lost income and lost production, and there will be logistical costs to organize this,” he said.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a podcast interview with David Axelrod this month that migrant labor is “a major source of labor force growth.”
“On balance, it helps the economy grow without actually robbing other people of their jobs,” she said. “It’s not a zero-sum game by any means.”