Labor Department jobs data shows immigrant worker decline over past year

The Labor Department’s August jobs report showed that the number of immigrant workers declined over the last year while job growth among U.S.-born workers accelerated.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data for August showed that over the last year the number of employed foreign-born workers – a metric that doesn’t differentiate between legal and illegal immigrants, according to the BLS – has declined by 822,000 since last August. 

In that period, the number of employed U.S.-born workers has increased by 2.76 million.

The unemployment rates for both groups of workers have changed little in the last year. Among foreign-born workers, the unemployment rate was 4.4%, up slightly from 4.3% a year ago – while the unemployment rate for U.S.-born workers also ticked higher to 4.6% from 4.4% last year.

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Industries like construction face a more restricted labor supply amid the crackdown on illegal immigration. (David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images / Getty Images)

Manhattan Institute fellow Daniel Di Martino told FOX Business that the trend is in part due to the U.S. economy slowing down due to uncertainty created by tariffs and the economic expansion coming to an end, though he noted that the decline in illegal immigration is a contributing factor.

“The labor force is probably going to shrink, just because the native-born labor force is aging,” Di Martino said. “The fact that the border has been closed for several months means that there’s many fewer people entering the labor force.” 

“That’s a good thing, though, in the sense that you don’t want the labor force to grow because of illegal immigration. But it’s a fact that it’s going to mean the labor supply is much more restricted in illegal immigrant-heavy industries, which are construction, delivery services, restaurants and those services like that,” he said.

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Illegal border crossings have fallen dramatically this year. (Photo by Lokman Vural Elibol/Anadolu via Getty Images / Getty Images)

Di Martino also noted reports about the falling number of foreign-born people in the U.S. in the last year, following a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data that found the foreign-born population in the U.S. shrank by more than a million people, the first decline since the 1960s.

“I think there is a chance that this is exaggerated,” he said. “Why? Because obviously there is no net illegal inflow since January that we know from the border data, and there is always some outflow. But I think that what may be partially driving this is actually reduced survey responses by illegal immigrants to the current population survey.”

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Job growth has slowed in recent months amid economic uncertainty due to tariffs. (Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)

David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, told FOX Business that, “There has been some talk about increases in employment among the native-born population, particularly since January, and that’s really spurious based on the survey design.” 

“Every year, the Census Bureau estimates what the population of the U.S. is – they don’t actually conduct the full census every year, but they look at births and deaths and immigration and estimate this is what the size of the population is likely to be at each month throughout the year,” he said.

“So they weight the survey based on that estimate, and so what ends up happening is if there’s a decrease in immigration, or if the number of immigrants goes down more than is expected by the Census Bureau at the start of the year, then that will automatically show up as more U.S. workers being employed,” Bier said. “That’s what makes these levels kind of funky, because we’re relying on this indirect estimate of the total population.”

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“There’s no evidence that the employment situation is improved over the last year for the U.S.-born population. If you look at the unemployment rate, which is actually what the survey is designed to estimate, the unemployment rate for U.S.-born workers or native-born workers has gone up,” Bier noted.