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More than 1.2 million immigrants left the U.S. labor force between January and July, according to preliminary Census Bureau data analyzed by the Pew Research Center, marking a rare decline in the nation’s immigrant workforce.
The figures include both legal residents and those in the country illegally. Immigrants account for nearly one-fifth of the total U.S. workforce, with certain industries relying heavily on their labor.
Pew senior researcher Stephanie Kramer said immigrants make up 45 percent of workers in farming, fishing and forestry, 30 percent in construction, and 24 percent in service jobs.
The decline coincides with the first recorded drop in the overall immigrant population in decades, following an all-time high of 14 million people living in the country illegally in 2023. Kramer said the reasons behind the reduction remain uncertain.
“It’s unclear how much of the decline we’ve seen since January is due to voluntary departures to pursue other opportunities or avoid deportation, removals, underreporting or other technical issues,” she said. “However, we don’t believe that the preliminary numbers indicating net-negative migration are so far off that the decline isn’t real.”
President Donald Trump has emphasized immigration enforcement as a core priority, vowing to deport millions of people in the country illegally. While he has said deportation efforts target dangerous criminals, government data show that most individuals detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement have no criminal convictions. Illegal border crossings have also dropped sharply under his administration’s policies.
The construction industry has already felt the impact. An analysis by the Associated General Contractors of America found construction jobs declined in about half of U.S. metro areas this year. The largest losses were in California, with 7,200 jobs cut in the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario region and 6,200 in the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale area.
The White House celebrated American job growth in a Labor Day news release.
“President Trump has created over half a million new jobs since he took office — all of them coming in the private sector,” the White House stated. “Employment for native-born Americans has grown by 2.4+ million since January, accounting for ALL net job gains in President Trump’s second term.”