�Թ���

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in Los Angeles in June 2025. Credit: U.S Department of Homeland Security

Heightened immigration enforcement during the second Trump administration has not expanded job opportunities for U.S.-born workers and is associated with a reduction of employment for U.S.-born men with no more than a high school degree, according to .

The study also found that employment among remaining immigrants declines 4% on average after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement surge, likely due to a “chilling effect” in which they stop going to work out of fear.

The study is the first national assessment of the impact the Trump administration’s immigration policy has had on the labor market.

It was published May 4 by the nonprofit, non-partisan National Bureau of Economic Research.

“We show that heightened ICE activity is harming the labor market overall, and we find no evidence that it is benefiting U.S.-born workers,” said author Chloe East, associate professor of economics at CU Boulder. “If anything, job opportunities for U.S.-born workers are going down as a result.”

Thousands of lost workers

For the study, East and co-author Elizabeth Cox, a research assistant with CU’s Institute for Behavioral Science, analyzed data from the federal Current Population Survey (CPS)—a monthly employment survey of about 59,000 households. They also looked at detailed data on ICE arrests across 58 regions around the country.

When comparing regions that had experienced a large and sudden increase in monthly ICE arrests between January 2025 and October 2025 with regions that had not, they found major differences in labor markets.

On average, in a region that had experienced an ICE surge, 4% fewer “likely undocumented” immigrants remaining in the community reported working in the previous week. (Because no U.S. survey asks for immigration status, economists use a proxy to estimate undocumented immigrant populations).

The study found no evidence that employers increased wages to attract U.S.-born workers to jobs once taken by undocumented immigrants, or that U.S. workers had more job opportunities after ICE enforcement surges.

But it did find that, on average, in regions which had experienced an ICE surge, 1.3% fewer U.S. born males with a high school degree or less had jobs.

These reductions in workforce are on top of the number of immigrants removed from communities through detention, arrest or deportation, notes East.

For instance, in a region where 1,200 people were arrested or detained by ICE over the study period, approximately 7,574 fewer undocumented immigrants and 1,200 fewer U.S.-born men with a high school degree or less would be employed, the study suggests.

“For every six male undocumented workers lost, we found that the labor market also loses one male U.S.-born worker,” said East.

Labor economist Chloe East

Employers cutting back

The CPS survey does not ask exactly why people leave the workforce. But previous studies of enforcement surges during the and have shown that heightened immigration enforcement can have a chilling effect on remaining immigrant communities, prompting them to avoid going out in public—including for work.��

That effect has been much stronger during the recent ICE surge than in previous enforcement upticks, the study suggests. That’s likely due to a change in tactics in which agents are arresting more people in public spaces, such as schools, streets and churches, and more people without criminal records are being detained.

Forty-three percent of U.S. immigrants report being concerned about themselves or someone they know being deported, according to previous research.

For U.S.-born workers, East said job opportunities can wither when employers—unable to find foreign laborers willing to do lower paying or more dangerous jobs—are forced to turn down jobs or decrease their production.

This phenomenon has been particularly strong for the U.S. agriculture sector, in which 17% of workers are undocumented, the manufacturing sector, in which 6% are undocumented, and the construction sector, in which 13% are undocumented.

For instance, in the construction sector, recent immigration enforcement surges appear to have had twice the average impact on U.S.-born workers with a high school degree or less, reducing their employment rate by 3%.

“There is a common narrative out there that mass deportations will free up job opportunities for U.S.-born workers, but numerous studies, including ours, have shown that is false,” said East. “If a construction company can’t find laborers, they’re going to take on less work and hire fewer people overall.”

Longer term, the contraction of the labor market could lead to other problems for the economy, reducing supply and driving prices of things like homes and manufactured goods up, said East.

“I hope our study gets people thinking beyond the headlines and rhetoric about the real economic impacts these enforcement actions are having on communities, the labor market and our pocketbooks,” she said.