A Shift in the American Workforce
The immigrant population in the United States underwent a record-breaking expansion during the final years of the Biden administration. Data indicates the total number of foreign-born residents jumped from 45.0 million to 53.3 million between 2021 and early 2025. This surge, reaching 15.8 percent of the total U.S. population, outpaced previous projections from the Census Bureau by nearly two decades. In 2024 alone, net international migration hit 2.8 million, a figure double any historical record. But the landscape changed following the transition to the Trump administration.
New border policies, combined with increased enforcement and deportations, slowed the influx of new arrivals. By July 2025, the foreign-born population had contracted by an estimated 2.2 million. While month-to-month data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) shows some fluctuation, the trend remains downward. As of February 2026, the foreign-born count sits 1.3 million lower than it was when the administration took office. This decline suggests a real, measurable shift in the demographic makeup of the country, challenging the long-held assumption that illegal immigration flows are impossible to reverse.
The Labor Market Link
Economic theory dictates that when the supply of labor increases, the market wage tends to fall. This pressure is most acute for native-born workers at the bottom of the skills spectrum. For years, advocates claimed that immigration has a negligible impact on wages, often pointing to the 1980 Mariel boatlift study as proof. Yet, more recent analysis shows that when immigrant labor is plentiful, employers often prioritize foreign-born workers, effectively crowding out native-born employees from low-skill roles in sectors like construction and agriculture. This preference is often sustained through informal hiring practices and specialized recruitment channels.
Evidence from Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) filings reveals that many employers systematically prefer Hispanic immigrants over white or black native workers for manual labor. The bias is explicit, with managers frequently using separate hiring lines or language requirements to maintain these demographics. These companies are not facing a true labor shortage. Instead, they are finding that immigrant labor remains cheaper and more controllable than the native-born workforce. When the supply of foreign-born workers contracts, however, these firms are forced to adapt, often by increasing wages or expanding their search to previously underutilized segments of the domestic population.
Future Implications for Native Employment
Signs of progress for native workers are beginning to appear. Between January 2025 and February 2026, the number of employed native workers increased by over 400,000, even as the foreign-born workforce shrank. Particularly encouraging is the rise in labor force participation among prime-age men without college degrees. This group has seen its non-participation rate drop from 15.7 percent to 15.0 percent in just over a year. Given the historical link between long-term unemployment and social issues, this trend marks a positive development for communities that had previously faced prolonged economic displacement.
Reversing the impact of mass immigration is not a process that happens overnight. A single year of decline, while significant, is merely a starting point. Employers, politicians, and workers require a sustained, predictable environment of low immigration to fundamentally adjust their long-term strategies. If the current trajectory continues, firms will likely shift further toward domestic recruitment, potentially raising wages and working conditions for the most vulnerable American laborers. The broader goal remains an economy where native-born workers—regardless of skill level—can find consistent, gainful employment in their home markets without facing artificial downward pressure from global labor flows.