Labour market realities will prevent Trump from deporting illegal migrants by the millions
After firing him from the same job four years ago, Americans just re-hired former President Donald Trump.
In recruitment language, Mr. Trump is a boomerang hire.
Mr. Trump takes office on 20 January next year and will complete his four-year term as the country’s oldest President, assuming he doesn’t die in office.
It seems astonishing that Trump’s criminal record would legally prevent him from being a candidate for every single leadership role in the government he will soon lead, except the most senior one. Try and wrap your mind around the cognitive dissonance of that.
One of the issues Trump went hard on during the campaign was the one of illegal migrants. Trump’s many threats on this issue included rounding up “20 million illegals” and sending them “back home”.
This approach seemed to play well with the core of Trump’s supporter base: non-college educated white men and well enough with the rest of the voting population to give him a comfortable victory in both the electoral college and the popular vote.
The cost and logistics of undertaking such a large-scale expulsion are monumental; therefore, like building a wall on the Mexico border, it’s a ‘policy’ that’s unlikely to be enacted, let alone fulfilled.
Consider the fact that about 4.4 million U.S.-born children under 18 live with an unauthorised immigrant parent. Would there really be widespread support for action that would force these parents to leave the United States?
Undocumented migrants are not a new issue but they have become a hot button political issue thanks to Trump.
Immigrants today account for 14.3% (48 million people) of the U.S. population, a roughly threefold increase from 4.7% in 1970.
The best estimate of the current level of undocumented migrants is somewhere between 11 million and 11.5 million people.
Contrary to Trump’s claims the total number of undocumented migrants has dropped since the record of 12.2 million people in 2007.
Again, contrary to constant Trump rhetoric, the number of undocumented migrants from Mexico has fallen substantially from a peak of 6.7 million in 2007 to around 4 million in 2024
The reality is that American employers rely on undocumented migrants to undertake many of the low-paid, low-skilled, and manual labour jobs that remains a core part of the workforce in many U.S. states.
Around 8.5 million undocumented migrants are in the U.S. labour market. In 2024 it is estimated they account for just under 5% of the U.S. labour market of 167 million workers (2023 data below). Again, this is a lower percentage of the total labour market than in 2007 (5.4%).
By state Nevada (9%) has the largest share of its labour market comprised of undocumented migrants. Followed by Texas (8%), Florida (8%), New Jersey (7%), California (7%) and Maryland (7%).
By total number of undocumented migrants employed, California, Texas and Florida and the three largest employing states.
You don’t have to spend very long around the hotels, restaurants, construction sites or agricultural producers of these states to see how many of the most physically demanding, lowest-skill and lowest-paid jobs are not occupied by white people.
Trump won’t be implementing his policy of large-scale forcible removal of undocumented migrants because it would be a disaster for Trump’s most important demographic – his donors.
Owners of hotels, restaurants, farms, and construction companies comprise a significant donor base for the GOP.
These Republicans would be apoplectic if a large swathe of their workforce were taken away. Wages would rise substantially, leading to higher costs for consumers and an unwelcome inflation boost, hurting the working-class Americans who overwhelmingly voted for Trump.
An insight into how a small shift from the norm can dramatically disrupt the normal functioning of a labour market was seen during and immediately after the COVID pandemic. In the year before the COVD lockdowns (2019) the total average number of monthly vacancies in the United States was 7.15 million. This monthly average jumped by an enormous 56% in 2022 to reach 11.2 million.
Closed borders, together with short and long-term worker illnesses, combined to send the U.S. labour market into shock, leading to rising wages, higher employee turnover and vacancies remaining unfilled for much longer than normal.
The U.S. labour market has added 1.67 million people to labour supply per year for each of the past two years just to keep up with the demand for labour.
Now consider the impact of deporting, say, 1 million undocumented workers in the first year of the second Trump Presidency.
You don’t have to be a labour market economist to know that such a move would be a complete disaster for the U.S. economy, let alone the emotional impact it would have on workplaces, families and local communities.
Trump talked a big game on massively ramping up the deportation of illegal migrants, but the reality of American economic and political life means there’s an almost zero per cent chance it’s ever going to happen.
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Most hiring managers aren’t overly focused on “what do we need to ensure we don’t get”. My view of American politics is that at least 60% of the focus of voting is “I am voting for x so we don’t get y.” I think there is a low expectation about benefits but a high expectation of what the costs could be. As such fear wins and so we have Trump.