The number of foreign-born workers in the American labor force has fallen by roughly 1.3 million since peaking in March 2025, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics household survey data analyzed by the National Foundation for American Policy, one of the clearest signs yet that the Trump administration’s aggressive approach to both illegal and legal immigration is fundamentally reshaping the composition of the American workforce less than two years into the president’s second term.
The scale of the shift becomes clear when set against expectations from before Trump returned to office. The Congressional Budget Office and the Social Security Administration had projected, based on pre-inauguration trends, that the foreign-born workforce would grow by approximately 1.3 million workers over this period, driven by continued high levels of both legal and illegal immigration under the policies of the previous administration.
Instead, the government’s own data shows an outright decline of similar magnitude, producing a gap of well over two million workers relative to what official government forecasters had assumed just months earlier.
For an administration that campaigned explicitly on reversing the immigration trends of the Biden years, this data represents a significant and measurable early accomplishment. Vice President JD Vance and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller have both pointed to reduced immigration flows and stepped up Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity as central pillars of the administration’s economic strategy, arguing that fewer illegal workers competing for jobs and depressing wages would ultimately benefit American-born workers across the labor market.
The Center for Immigration Studies, a research organization that has long advocated for lower immigration levels, estimates that more than two-thirds of the overall decline in the foreign-born population has come specifically from the illegal immigrant population, a group CIS estimated stood at roughly 14.2 million by mid-2025, down 1.6 million from its peak under the previous administration.
The organization has pointed to the dramatic drop in southern border encounters recorded since Trump took office, along with widespread media reporting on illegal immigrants voluntarily leaving the country, as corroborating evidence that enforcement policy, not merely survey noise, is driving the numbers.
The total foreign-born population in the Current Population Survey, which includes both legal and illegal immigrants of all ages, stood at a record 53.3 million when Trump was inaugurated in January 2025. By July of that year, government survey data showed the total had already declined by 2.2 million, with roughly one million of that decline coming from working-age immigrants who left the labor force entirely, and the remainder made up of children and nonworking adults who left the country or were removed.
Revisions to the underlying statistical weights used in the Current Population Survey have since narrowed some of these estimates, with the Center for Immigration Studies noting in its own analysis that the February 2026 data, using updated weights, still shows a substantial decline of 1.1 million in the foreign-born population since January 2025, even after accounting for methodology changes that pulled some of the more dramatic early estimates back down.
The employment-specific figures tell a consistent story across multiple monthly readings throughout 2025 and into 2026. National Foundation for American Policy analyses tracking the data month by month found a decline of 881,000 foreign-born workers in the labor force compared to the start of the administration, with an even larger drop of 1.3 million measured against the March 2025 peak, a peak that occurred just weeks into Trump’s term before enforcement measures had fully ramped up.
By February 2026, updated Bureau of Labor Statistics figures showed a drop of 596,000 foreign-born workers since January of that year alone and a decline of just over one million since the March 2025 high point, figures that, while somewhat smaller than earlier estimates due to statistical revisions, still point in the same clear direction.
The most recent jobs report, released this month, sharpened the picture further, showing the foreign born population overall had fallen by 401,000 over the trailing year, with the number of foreign born workers actually in the labor force declining by 550,000 to 31.5 million and foreign born employment falling by 278,000 to around 30.5 million.
Notably, virtually the entire recent decline has come from foreign born men specifically, whose population fell by 819,000 to 22.8 million, with 962,000 fewer foreign born men in the labor force and 752,000 fewer holding jobs, alongside a drop in their labor force participation rate from 77.5 percent down to 76.1 percent. That gender-skewed pattern lines up closely with enforcement priorities that have focused heavily on construction, agriculture, and other physically demanding industries historically dominated by male immigrant labor, much of it concentrated among illegal workers without legal status to remain in the country.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has weighed in on the broader economic implications, noting that the labor market has experienced essentially no growth and no meaningful net private sector job creation over several recent months, a slowdown he has connected in part to the shrinking immigrant labor supply. Labor economists tracking the data have been careful to note that this is not simply a story of American workers stepping in to fill the gap left by departing immigrants.
According to NFAP’s analysis, the labor force participation rate for U.S.-born workers aged sixteen and older has actually ticked down slightly over the same period, from roughly 61.4 percent in early 2025 to closer to 61.0 percent by early 2026, offering no evidence that native-born workers are flooding into the jobs immigrants are vacating.
That finding cuts against one of the administration’s central talking points, namely that reduced immigration would create more job opportunities and upward wage pressure for American citizens. NFAP senior fellow Mark Regets has pushed back on the assumption that a shrinking labor force automatically benefits native workers, arguing instead that immigrants both create demand for goods and services through their own spending and work alongside American-born workers in ways that boost productivity for both groups simultaneously.
Regets has also cautioned against comparing the current slowdown to 1970s-style stagflation too directly, noting that today’s supply shocks stem from a shrinking labor force, tariff policy, and rising energy costs rather than the oil shocks that defined that earlier era, even as he acknowledges some parallels in how the combination of slow growth and persistent price pressure is playing out.
The broader economic modeling behind these figures paints a striking long-term picture. NFAP’s analysis projects that, given current and projected immigration policy trajectories, the country could see a cumulative labor loss of approximately 19 million worker years by 2028 and as much as 102 million worker years by 2035 relative to prior projections. Translated into economic output, the organization estimates the policies could reduce projected cumulative gross domestic product by 1.9 trillion dollars, or roughly 5,612 dollars per person, between 2025 and 2028 alone, with the cumulative hit reaching 12.1 trillion dollars, or about 34,369 dollars per person, by 2035 if current trends continue uninterrupted.
Supporters of the administration’s approach argue these projections rest on assumptions that immigrant labor is essentially irreplaceable for continued economic growth, an assumption they reject on both economic and sovereignty grounds. From this perspective, a smaller but more legally compliant workforce, rebuilt gradually through legal immigration channels rather than sustained illegal entry, represents a more sustainable and lawful foundation for long-term growth, even if it means slower headline GDP figures in the near term. Advocates of stricter enforcement also note that the pre-Trump baseline itself, with more than 53 million foreign-born residents at a record high, reflected years of historically loose border enforcement under the previous administration, and argue that some normalization of those numbers was inevitable and overdue regardless of the specific policy mix pursued.
The administration has paired its enforcement crackdown with substantial changes to legal immigration as well. According to NFAP’s tracking, the administration has reduced the projected level of legal immigration to the United States by more than 600,000 immigrants during Trump’s second term through a combination of policies, including the reduction and suspension of refugee admissions, a travel ban covering nineteen countries, the winding down of Temporary Protected Status designations for several nationalities, and new restrictions preventing international students from working under Optional Practical Training and STEM OPT programs after completing their coursework.
A newly implemented policy requiring U.S. companies to pay a one-time fee of 100,000 dollars for new H-1B visa petitions, aimed at skilled foreign workers, is expected to further curtail legal high-skill immigration once its full effects are reflected in future labor force data, though the analysis notes that the fee’s impact has not yet been fully captured in the numbers reviewed so far.
Historical context underscores just how significant this shift represents relative to the recent past. Between 2014 and 2024, immigrant workers accounted for more than half of all American labor force growth, with some analyses putting the immigrant share of labor force expansion during parts of that period as high as 84.7 percent. Average annual labor force growth over that decade exceeded 1.3 million workers per year. Rather than continuing that trajectory, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the total U.S. labor force had actually contracted by 213,000 workers since the start of the Trump administration through early 2026, according to seasonally adjusted federal data, a reversal that stands in sharp contrast to more than a decade of steady expansion.
Administration officials and allied economists counter that any short-term disruption is a necessary and worthwhile cost of restoring the rule of law to the nation’s immigration system after what they describe as years of effectively open border policy under the Biden administration. They point to falling border encounter numbers, the sharply reduced illegal population estimated by groups like CIS, and the broader restoration of interior enforcement capacity at ICE as evidence that the country is finally moving toward a legal immigration system that prioritizes American workers and orderly, controlled entry over the mass illegal migration that characterized the prior four years.
