As the United States celebrated Labor Day this year, the nation’s workforce was facing a seismic shift few could ignore. According to preliminary Census Bureau data analyzed by the Pew Research Center, more than 1.2 million immigrants vanished from the U.S. labor force between January and July 2025. This sharp decline, which includes both legal residents and undocumented workers, is sending shockwaves through industries as diverse as agriculture, construction, and healthcare—and raising fresh concerns about the country’s economic future.
Immigrants, who make up nearly one-fifth of the American workforce, play a pivotal role in keeping key sectors humming. Pew senior researcher Stephanie Kramer broke down the numbers: immigrants represent 45% of workers in farming, fishing, and forestry, 30% in construction, and 24% in the service sector. That’s not just a statistic—it’s the backbone of the nation’s food supply, infrastructure, and personal care industries.
The reasons behind this sudden exodus are complex and, as Kramer noted, not entirely clear. “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 told the Associated Press. “However, we don’t believe that the preliminary numbers indicating net-negative migration are so far off that the decline isn’t real.”
This marks the first time in recent memory that the overall immigrant population in the U.S. is shrinking, following a record number of 14 million undocumented residents in 2023. The timing coincides with President Donald Trump’s stepped-up immigration enforcement, which has led to a dramatic drop in illegal border crossings. While Trump has insisted his focus is on “dangerous criminals,” most people detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement have no criminal convictions, according to AP reporting.
For workers like Lidia, a farm laborer in California’s Central Valley, the consequences are deeply personal. “The worry is they’ll pull you over when you’re driving and ask for your papers,” she told AP, speaking under the condition that only her first name be used due to fears of deportation. “We need to work. We need to feed our families and pay our rent.” After more than two decades in the U.S., Lidia now faces the possibility of being sent back to a country she barely knows, leaving behind her three American-born children.
The ripple effects are everywhere. In McAllen, Texas, Elizabeth Rodriguez, director of farmworker advocacy for the National Farmworker Ministry, described how immigration enforcement actions stalled harvesting operations. “In May, during the peak of our watermelon and cantaloupe season, it delayed it. A lot of crops did go to waste,” she said. Construction sites in the area have also “completely died,” Rodriguez added, as ICE targeted job sites and mechanic shops, further eroding the available workforce.
These stories aren’t isolated. Across the country, construction employment has declined in about half of U.S. metropolitan areas. The Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario region in California saw the largest loss, with 7,200 jobs disappearing, while the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Glendale area lost 6,200 jobs, according to the Associated General Contractors of America. Ken Simonson, the group’s chief economist, explained, “Construction employment has stalled or retreated in many areas for a variety of reasons. But contractors report they would hire more people if only they could find more qualified and willing workers and tougher immigration enforcement wasn’t disrupting labor supplies.”
The impact reaches far beyond fields and building sites. Kramer warns that immigrants make up about 43% of home health care aides—a sector already stretched thin by America’s aging population. Arnulfo De La Cruz, president of SEIU 2015 in California, which represents long-term care workers, put it bluntly: “What’s going to happen when millions of Americans can no longer find a home care provider? What happens when immigrants aren’t in the field to pick our crops? Who’s going to staff our hospitals and nursing homes?”
Economists are sounding the alarm, too. Pia Orrenius, a labor economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, explained to AP that immigrants have historically accounted for at least half of U.S. job growth. “The influx across the border from what we can tell is essentially stopped, and that’s where we were getting millions and millions of migrants over the last four years,” she said. “That has had a huge impact on the ability to create jobs.”
The consequences aren’t just about labor shortages. In June, Deutsche Bank warned that the ongoing immigration crackdown was causing a more severe negative supply shock to the U.S. economy than even the tariffs imposed by the Trump administration. Moody’s Chief Economist took it a step further, predicting that these policies could push inflation from 2.5% to nearly 4% by early next year. That’s a jump that could hit every American’s wallet, from the grocery store to the gas pump.
Not surprisingly, the debate over the role of immigrants in the U.S. economy has reignited. On a recent podcast, Anthony Scaramucci, former White House communications director, remarked, “The U.S. was built by risk-taking immigrants and will never be a country where everyone is safe and happy.” His words reflect a growing chorus of voices—across the political spectrum—questioning whether the current path is sustainable, or even wise.
Amid the statistics and policy debates, it’s easy to lose sight of the human dimension. Lisa Tate, who manages her family’s 800-acre citrus and avocado operation in Ventura County, California, described the uncertainty that haunts her workforce. “People were being taken out of laundromats, off the side of the road,” she said. Though she hesitates to place all the blame on immigration policies, the fear of ICE raids has clearly spread fast, shrinking crews and leaving crops at risk.
For now, the numbers speak for themselves. More than 1.2 million immigrants have left the U.S. labor force in just seven months—a figure that’s hard to ignore. With immigrants making up nearly 20% of the workforce and dominating critical sectors, the loss is already being felt in empty job sites, wasted crops, and care facilities struggling to stay staffed.
As the nation looks ahead, the question isn’t just whether the economy can adapt, but whether the country is prepared for the far-reaching consequences of a shrinking immigrant workforce. For many, the answer is still up in the air, but the urgency is unmistakable.
