Native-born workers lost up to 297,000 jobs by September 2025
A report shared exclusively with The Guardian projects that, if the Trump administration’s immigration policies continue, elderly Americans would face an average annual Social Security benefit reduction of $2,152 — an 8.6% cut — by 2034 and every year thereafter. America’s Voice, a pro-immigration reform organization, commissioned the analysis, “Economic Impacts of Trump Administration Immigration Policy,” and researchers at Economic Insights and Research Consulting, a firm focused on economic analysis, conducted the study.
The projected benefit reduction reflects a contraction in the payroll-tax contributions that fund the retirement system, according to the report. Unauthorized immigrants contribute an estimated $26 billion annually in payroll taxes to the Social Security trust fund, even though they typically are not eligible to receive those benefits themselves, the report said. Several Social Security trustees have publicly warned that lower-than-expected net immigration is worsening the system’s finances, the report notes. The trustees named include Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, and Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano.
“The share of that annual loss due to the Trump immigration policy would be $2,152 [per person on average],” the report’s authors wrote. “Thus, the Trump immigration policies, if continued, would reduce projected average annual Social Security benefits by 8.6% in 2034, and every year thereafter.”
The agricultural sector, where 42% of crop workers are undocumented and 68% are foreign-born, has been among the most heavily affected by enforcement actions, according to the report. Farmers across the country are warning that the vast majority — or, in some cases, all — of their workforce has “disappeared overnight,” leaving produce to fall to the ground or rot in the fields.
Food products heavily reliant on immigrant labor saw sharper price increases than the overall grocery basket in the 19 months since Trump’s January 2025 inauguration than in the prior 19 months, the report found. Fresh whole milk rose 5.7%, canned vegetables rose 6.3%, and apples rose 7.2%. In the 19 months before Trump returned to office, most immigrant-dependent foods had risen more slowly than other foods — and some prices had actually fallen.
“One thing that changed was the [immigration] policy,” Robert Lynch, one of the report’s authors, told The Guardian. “Before, the trend for all those goods was a lower inflation rate. And afterward, the trend was higher inflation. So the trend was reversed, and that was quite striking.”
The construction industry, where foreign-born workers fill almost a third of all occupations, has also seen severe disruption, the report found. In states more dependent on immigrant labor, costs for new single-family homes rose 10.9% in the first eight months of 2026 compared with the same period in 2024, bringing the average project’s monetary value from $305,752 to $338,752. Nationwide, permits for single-family homes have dropped 10.6% since January 2025, with steeper declines in regions more reliant on foreign-born workers.
The construction slowdown has spilled into other trades, according to the report. California, Nevada, New Jersey, Florida, and New York are among the states where construction employment has declined — when immigrant roofers and framers become unavailable, American electricians and plumbers lose the project work that would follow, the report’s authors found.
“It’s not like someone can go work in construction and just not have any skills. And we’re losing people who have been here for decades working in construction,” Michael Ettlinger, one of the report’s authors, told The Guardian. “That could be fixed, but it’s going to take time.”
Other industries reporting cost increases and labor shortages include healthcare — home health care, nursing homes, and adult daycare — as well as lawn care, landscaping, and groundskeeping, sectors where immigrants have historically formed a disproportionate share of the workforce, according to the report.
By September 2025, less than nine months into Trump’s second term, native-born workers had already lost an estimated 51,000 to 297,000 jobs because of changes to immigration policy, the report said. The labor force shrank by an estimated 919,000 people over 18 months of the second term, while job growth slowed to roughly a third of its pre-inauguration rate. An exodus of 1.2 million foreign-born workers over two years frames the disruption, the report found.
Ettlinger framed the analysis as a data-driven response to administration statements about the effects of its immigration agenda.
“When the Trump administration says things, it’s not always data-driven,” Ettlinger told The Guardian. “And we wanted to see what the data shows, and what other people have found the data shows. Turns out that refutes what the US president primarily is asserting.”
Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of America’s Voice, told The Guardian that the long-term consequences are only beginning to surface.
“We are just beginning to see the harms in terms of what is happening here domestically. But the impacts of these policies, of these efforts, are going to be long-lasting. And I think that is by design,” Cárdenas said.
Lynch said the economic picture would likely worsen if the administration’s immigration agenda continues as expected.
“We would expect higher prices,” Lynch told The Guardian. “We would expect more job losses, slower economic growth and the affordability crisis getting worse — partly because prices are higher, partly because people are losing their jobs and their incomes and they can’t afford as much.”