President-elect Donald J. Trump won the White House based in part on his promises to rein in immigration, with targeted policies ranging from sending criminals back to their countries of origin to more sweeping policies such as mass deportations. During the campaign, Trump pledged to end temporary protected status that allows workers from select countries to come to the United States to work. If some of the larger deportation efforts, such as rolling back temporary protected status, come to fruition, experts say there will be ripple effects felt in most sectors of the economy, particularly construction, housing and agriculture.
Economists and labor specialists are deeply concerned about the economic impact of policies that would deport workers already in the United States, whether documented or undocumented.
Recruitment agencies were monitoring the elections particularly closely.
“The morning after the election, we sat down as a leadership team and explored what does this mean for talent availability?” said Jason Levrant, president and chief operating officer of AtWork Group, a national franchise-based staffing agency. AtWork provides trade staff in sectors with high immigrant populations such as warehouses, manufacturing and agriculture in 39 states.
Workers – or “talent” in industry parlance – are already in short supply. While the worst of the labor crisis resulting from the post-Covid economic boom has passed, and labor supply and demand have returned to balance in recent months, the number of workers available to fill jobs across the US economy remains a closely watched data point. Employers and economists say mass deportations would exacerbate this economic problem.
“If the proposed immigration policies become a reality, there could be a significant impact,” Liverant said, noting estimates that a mass deportation program could leave up to 1 million potential job openings difficult to fill.
How many illegal immigrants work in the United States?
There are various statistics provided about the number of illegal immigrants in the United States. The left-leaning Center for American Progress estimates the number at about 11.3 million, of whom 7 million are working. The American Immigration Council, an advocacy group in favor of expanding immigration, citing data from the American Community Survey, also estimates the number of undocumented people in the United States at about 11 million. The nonpartisan Pew Research Center estimates the number at nearly 8 million people.
“There are millions, many millions who work in this trade illegally, and we don't have Americans doing this work,” said Chad Brinke, CEO of Well Build Construction Consulting, which works with construction companies. “We need these workers; what we all want is for them to be documented; we want to know who they are, where they are, and make sure they pay taxes; we don't want them to go away.”
Liverant says how to fill jobs lost due to the mass deportation is still being determined.
“Are we pulling talent from one area to another, but then someone else loses it,” Levrant said. “This is very important and we have to stay ahead of the curve.”
Leverant says he's not worried about losing any of the 20,000 workers AtWork sends to various places because the status of documents is strictly checked, but if other companies lose their workers, they will rely more on staffing agencies like AtWork to source talent that's already there. . Shortage of supply. Supply and demand determine workers' wages, which will have to rise. This will extend through the supply chain directly to the supermarket or sporting goods store.
He added: “We are playing the long game now, and we will feel the pain and we will see shortages, slowdowns and delays on all fronts.”
Production not reaching the market because there are not enough workers to get it to distribution, or construction projects being delayed, are among the possible outcomes of limited labor supply.
Concerns about the workforce extend to skilled labor and technology
There are also concerns about how a stricter immigration policy will negatively impact skilled workers.
“This is more than just low-skilled labor; it affects tech workers and engineers. We don't have enough skilled talent there either to fill the jobs,” Levrant said, adding that he couldn't imagine doctors and scientists being rounded up and arrested. They were deported, but restrictions on H-1B visas and a generally unwelcoming atmosphere can keep talent from coming.
Janessa Hollingshead, head of expansion at Uber Works, the ride-sharing company's on-demand staffing arm, agrees that technology will be affected, if past is prologue.
“The tech industry relies heavily on immigrants to fill very technical and critical roles,” Hollingshead said, recalling that Uber told all tech workers on H-1B visas during Trump’s first presidency that if they went to their home countries for the holidays, they might not travel. Be able to come back.
According to the American Immigration Council, during the first Trump administration, the government's USCIS denied a larger percentage of H-1B petitions than in the previous four years, but many denials were overturned, resulting in a decline in the level of immigration. The denial rate by fiscal year 2020 was 13%, compared to 24% in 2018. Fiscal years 2021 and 2022 had the lowest denial rates ever recorded.
U.S. tech companies will have to find tech talent from pools of people already in the country that are currently being overlooked, Hollingshead says.
“American companies will need to figure out how to do this or face more serious labor shortages,” Hollingshead says.
At his rally at Madison Square Garden in New York just before the election, Trump said: “On Day One, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to get criminals out.”
“I wouldn't view his mass deportation as mere rhetoric,” said David Leopold, head of the immigration practice group at law firm UB Greensfelder. “We have to assume he means what he says.”
However, despite the impact on the labor market, in practice, mass deportations may be difficult to implement.
“It's very expensive to remove 11 million people,” Leopold said, predicting that Trump will use ICE and federal agencies but will also rely on local law enforcement to detain immigrants.
In a phone interview with NBC News' Kristen Welker shortly after the election results, Trump cited the darker rhetoric on immigrants that proved successful during the campaign while saying he was not opposed to people coming into the country — in fact, he said more people would be They are needed if his administration's strategy of requiring companies to establish operations within the United States succeeds. “We want people to come,” Trump said. “We're going to have a lot of companies coming to our country. They want to come to our country. … We want companies, factories, factories, car factories to come to our country, and they will come. And so we need people, but we want people who are not necessarily in prison because they killed Seven people.”
The American Immigration Council estimates that in a long-term mass deportation targeting 1 million people per year — which it said reflects “more conservative proposals” made by proponents of mass deportation — the cost would average $88 billion per year, totaling $88 billion per year. At a cost of $967.9 billion over more than a decade.
In his interview with NBC News, Trump dismissed concerns about the cost. “It's not a question of price,” he said. “We have no other choice,” Trump said. “When people kill and are killed, when the drug lords destroy countries, they will now go back to those countries because they don’t live here. There is no price.” He said.
Depending on the severity of the plan, the changes could reach consumers in the form of price increases, supply problems, and restricted access to goods and services, Leopold says.
Building and housing damage
Nan Wu, director of research at the American Immigration Council, echoes the concerns of others in anticipating consumer disruptions if deportations escalate under Trump.
“Mass deportations would exacerbate America’s ongoing labor shortages, especially in industries that rely heavily on undocumented immigrant workers,” Wu said, citing AIC research that shows the construction industry would lose one in eight workers, citing AIC research. 14 percent of construction workers in the United States are undocumented.
“Taking away such a large number of workers over a short period of time would drive up construction costs and delay the construction of new homes, making housing less expensive in many parts of the country,” Wu said.
The same applies to the agricultural industry, which will also see the loss of one in eight workers, she says.
“Looking at specific occupations, about a quarter of farmworkers and agricultural graders and sorters are undocumented workers,” Wu said. “Losing the agricultural workers who grow, pick and pack our food will hurt local food production and raise food prices.”
USDA figures put the number of undocumented farmworkers at 41 percent in 2018, the most recent figures for the year available, with California having the highest number.
AIC estimates that US GDP will shrink by $1.1 trillion to $1.7 trillion.
The conservative think tank American Compass calls for a “skills-based immigration policy” which it says requires “serious immigration enforcement that prevents people from working illegally. This enforcement will need to deal with the future influx of immigrants as well as dealing with the immigration problem.” Millions of undocumented workers are already here,” the policy brief said.
Among its policy priorities are the mandatory use of the electronic verification system by all employers, along with strict criminal penalties for repeated or willful violations; Short-term work permits are available to undocumented immigrants who have already been in the country for an extended period of time – but with a timeline for when they must leave the country based on how long they have already been living there; And for those who have resided in the United States for a longer period, the ability to obtain permanent legal status after paying a large fine.
Brinke says the impact of the mass deportation program will be enormous. “One of the natural problems with undocumented workers is that we don't know how many there are because they're not registered. It's not easy. I bet half or more of the workers on site are undocumented in certain geographic areas.” He said.
“If you're building a nuclear facility or colleges and universities, you may be working with very few undocumented workers because there's a much higher level of oversight,” Brinke said. “These are the sectors that will ignore and move forward.” He expected the same for union workers.
But there will be significant impacts on single-family and multifamily housing construction, according to Brinke, sectors of the housing market that he believes could be “crippled.”
“There will be incredible delays. A project that takes 18 months on average could take five years to complete because of the lack of bodies,” Brinke said. He added: “It will be less devastating in Boston than in Austin; in Austin, every business will close.”
Despite the bleak forecast, Brinke does not believe mass deportations will happen. “Donald Trump is a real estate developer, and he understands what is going on,” he said. “Mass deportation is not possible without a crippling economic impact.”
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