Abby Phillip
by Sharelle B. McNair
December 10, 2024
Domestic Labor Braces For Trouble As Trump’s Massive Immigrant Deportation Plan Looms
What would the solution be?
Occupations where companies have struggled to find domestic labor are worried about how President-elect Donald Trump’s deportation plan will affect their workforces, CNBC reports.
Foreign-born workers have been taking open positions in industries including construction, agriculture, technology and healthcare. Now, leaders and advocacy groups are worried that hiring companies will face difficulties if Trump’s massive immigration deportation plan comes to life.
According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, immigrant workers made up 18.6% of the workforce in 2023.
“American companies are going to feel the strain on labor costs, and we’re going to be—depending on the skill level of the individual you are talking about—we’re going to be losing the fight for labor,” Jennie Murray, CEO of the National Immigration Forum, said.
There is a certain belief that the indicted businessman won’t be able to execute his plan without weakening the workforce. A Brookings Institution study outlined the potential effects on the 2025 labor market and U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) in both high- and low-immigration scenarios. It is estimated that Trump’s immigration policy could reduce the GDP growth in 2025 by 0.1 to 0.4 percentage points‚ or $30 billion to $110 billion.
“The consequences of a more extreme mass deportation policy would be economically disruptive in unpredictable ways and are not modeled here,” the writers observed.
Study author and senior fellow at the institution’s Hamilton Project, Wendy Edelberg, said it will be more expensive for companies in certain sectors to provide goods and services since there will be eye-opening reductions in labor supply, which will lead to higher inflation. In other cases, inflation will ease.
“If we’re talking about what we might see in aggregate for inflation, we have to think about …another side of the ledger, which is we’re going to have less demand for goods and services because immigrants are going to not be here,” Edelberg said.
“And moreover, the immigrants who stay, particularly the recent immigrants who stay, my assessment is that they’re going to pull back on their spending, as, you know, they’re trying to figure out what their future holds.”
However, the incoming Trump administration is standing down on their promise to execute “the largest deportation operation” in U.S. history while “simultaneously lowering costs for families and strengthening our workforce.”
“The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin, giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail, like deporting migrant criminals and restoring our economic greatness,” Trump-Vance transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “He will deliver.”
A number of Republican-led states are on standby to help Trump facilitate his deportation plan.
According to the Associated Press, lawmakers in states like Missouri have issued proposals that will give local officers the authority to arrest people suspected of entering the country illegally. Missouri state Sen. Curtis Trent, who is sponsoring one of the proposals, said state officials will be “hand-delivering them to the nearest port of deportation so that they could be removed in a safe and orderly fashion.”
Trent’s bill would empower local police officers to arrest people as a result of a new state crime labeled “improper entry by an alien,” which is punishable by a fine up to $100,000 and a court-ordered ride to the U.S. border.
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