How the Immigration Crackdown Cost the US Economy 668,000 Jobs

When immigration enforcement ramps up, the headlines focus on arrests, but the economic bill lands on workers of every background. A new analysis from the Brookings Institution, reported by Inc., estimates that the 2025 enforcement surge cost 668,000 jobs across 86 US cities, with as many as 297,000 of those positions held by American-born workers. For job seekers, the takeaway is direct: when a major source of labor disappears quickly, the businesses that depend on it shrink, and openings dry up for everyone nearby. At Metaintro, we track these labor shifts so you can read the market clearly and plan your next move with real data instead of noise.

How Did Researchers Reach the 668,000 Figure?

The Brookings team, led by economists Marcela Escobari, Ian Seyal, and Paul Beach, examined the 86 cities that saw the sharpest increases in Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests during the first half of 2025. Those cities represented the top 25 percent of the 341 metro areas the researchers studied. By comparing employment trends in high-enforcement cities against places with little change, the authors isolated how the arrest surge moved local hiring.

Their core finding is that each excess arrest, used as a proxy for the broader enforcement shock, was associated with roughly 13 jobs lost overall. Multiplied across the cities studied, that ratio adds up to the headline 668,000 figure. The estimate draws on arrest data from the Deportation Data Project, which tracks ICE activity through public records requests, combined with employment data from the labor market research firm Lightcast and federal payroll records. Pulling those sources together let the researchers separate the enforcement effect from ordinary month-to-month churn.

Why Did American-Born Workers Lose Jobs Too?

The most striking part of the report is that the losses spread far past the workers directly targeted. Of the 668,000 jobs the study attributes to the enforcement surge, Brookings estimates between 51,000 and 297,000 would otherwise have been held by American-born workers. In other words, the policy designed in part to open jobs for native-born workers appears to have eliminated a meaningful number of those jobs instead.

The mechanism is straightforward once you map how a workplace runs. A construction crew, a kitchen, or a warehouse rarely consists of a single type of worker. When several members of a team vanish suddenly, the remaining roles can become unworkable. A general contractor short on framers cannot keep a project on schedule, so the project manager, the bookkeeper, and the supply runner all lose hours too. As Fortune noted in its coverage of the study, that knock-on effect is exactly why the damage reached workers who were never at any personal risk from enforcement.

What Does Separate Research Say About the Spillover?

The Brookings numbers do not stand alone. A working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, authored by economists Chloe East and Elizabeth Cox of the University of Colorado Boulder, reached a similar conclusion using a different method. Drawing on Current Population Survey data covering 59,000 households across 58 regions from January to October 2025, with arrest data analyzed through the university's Institute for Behavioral Science, the authors found that areas with surging ICE activity saw employment among remaining immigrants fall by about 4 percent.

The same study found that US-born men with a high school degree or less saw their employment drop by 1.3 percent in those high-enforcement regions, with no positive offset anywhere in the data. East summarized the result plainly, stating that "for every six male undocumented workers lost, we found that one male U.S.-born worker was also lost." In a typical region with 1,200 ICE arrests, the model projected roughly 7,574 fewer undocumented immigrants working alongside about 1,200 fewer US-born men with that education level. Two independent teams reaching the same direction strengthens the case that the spillover is real, not a statistical fluke.

Which Industries Took the Biggest Hit?

Construction absorbed the heaviest blow, which is unsurprising given how many workers in the trade are foreign-born. According to research from the National Association of Home Builders, immigrants make up about one in four construction workers overall and 32.5 percent of construction tradespeople specifically, with foreign-born concentration reaching 61 percent among drywall installers, 52 percent among roofers, and 51 percent among painters. The Brookings study found something more revealing still: construction lost even more jobs than its immigrant share alone would predict, a sign that enforcement disrupted entire operations rather than removing workers one for one.

The losses did not stop at industries with large immigrant workforces. Arts and entertainment, a sector that employs comparatively few immigrants, also saw a sharp employment decline in high-enforcement cities. The reason is what economists call a chilling effect, described in coverage by the South China Morning Post: when raids dominate the news, families pull back on spending, and the venues, crews, and service jobs that rely on that spending contract in turn. In Los Angeles, the report found that consumer spending fell 20 to 25 percent in neighborhoods with high concentrations of foreign-born residents in the two months after an enforcement campaign was announced, a drop steep enough to threaten any local business.

How Does This Fit the Broader Labor Slowdown?

The enforcement story sits inside a larger shift in how fast the US workforce is growing. Foreign-born workers made up 19.1 percent of the US labor force in 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and analysis from SHRM shows foreign-born workers have driven a large share of recent labor force growth, so a fast contraction in that group leaves a visible hole. Analysts at Goldman Sachs have estimated that net immigration fell roughly 80 percent from its recent peak, sliding from about one million people a year in the 2010s to 500,000 in 2025 and a projected 200,000 in 2026. The bank's US economics team, in a report led by economist David Mericle, summed it up plainly, noting that labor supply growth has declined sharply as immigration has fallen from the peak reached in late 2023.

That matters for how you read monthly jobs reports. Goldman calculates that the economy now needs only about 70,000 new jobs a month to keep unemployment steady, and projects that break-even rate could fall to roughly 50,000 by the end of 2026. The effect is already visible in the official data. The most recent employment report showed nonfarm payrolls rising by just 115,000 in April with unemployment holding at 4.3 percent, a print that looks soft until you account for how few new workers are now entering the pool. Reading those numbers correctly keeps you from misjudging your own odds in a given field.

Could the Effects Outlast the Current Policy?

There is reason to think the damage may echo for years rather than months. Research highlighted by Fortune and rooted in analysis of the 1920s immigration quotas found that restricting immigration did not lift native-born workers over the long run. Studying the 1921 and 1924 quota laws across the 1900, 1920, and 1940 censuses, researchers found that a five percentage point increase in exposure to a quota reduced weekly wages by 2.6 percent, and that sons in more affected counties were significantly less likely to move into a higher-status job than their fathers.

The historical parallel is not a forecast, but it cuts against the intuition that fewer immigrant workers automatically means better outcomes for everyone else. When a labor force shrinks abruptly, the businesses that would have hired, trained, and promoted local workers often shrink with it, and the lost rungs on the career ladder are hard to rebuild. For a worker early in a career, that is a reminder that broad labor-supply shocks can shape opportunity well beyond the year they hit.

What Does This Mean for Your Career?

If you are job hunting in 2026, the most useful response is to treat geography and sector as moving targets rather than fixed facts. Cities that saw the largest enforcement-driven contractions may show thinner hiring in construction, hospitality, food service, and the local businesses that depend on neighborhood spending. That does not mean those markets are closed, but it does mean you should widen your search radius and watch which employers are still actively staffing up.

It also pays to lean toward roles and industries that are less exposed to sudden labor shocks. Healthcare, skilled trades with licensing barriers, logistics, and professional services tend to hold up better when one slice of the labor force shrinks. If you work in a hard-hit sector, the disruption can cut both ways: some employers face worker shortages they urgently need to fill, so a well-targeted application can land faster than usual. Watching official openings data such as the monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey helps you see where demand is real rather than rumored. Tracking live openings, rather than reacting to headlines, is the difference between guessing and deciding, and tools that surface where hiring is genuinely happening, like Metaintro, help you spend your energy on markets that are actually moving.

How Reliable Is the 668,000 Estimate?

No single study is the final word, and the authors present a range rather than a pinpoint number for the American-born share precisely because the modeling carries uncertainty. The 668,000 figure is an estimate built on arrest data, payroll records, and labor market modeling, and it covers the 86 cities studied rather than the entire country. The headline conclusion has been corroborated across multiple reputable outlets, including Fortune and Business Standard, and aligns in direction with the separate NBER findings, which gives the core result solid footing.

What the data shows clearly is direction and scale. The Brookings authors concluded that enforcement at this scale and speed destroys jobs, disrupts businesses, and depresses the local economies where Americans live and work. For a job seeker, the precise count matters less than the pattern: large, fast labor-supply shocks ripple outward, and the smart move is to position yourself in the parts of the market that absorb them best.

That framing is what turns a headline number into something you can actually use. The takeaway is not to track every revision to the count, but to read the direction of travel and act early. When a labor-supply shock moves through an industry, the disruption tends to land first on the businesses and local economies most exposed to it, while better-insulated roles and regions feel the effects more slowly. Job seekers who understand that pattern can stop reacting to each new figure and start steering toward the parts of the market that hold up best when conditions tighten.

In practice, that means keeping your skills portable, your network warm, and your search broad enough to follow demand rather than chase a single employer. It also means treating the wider labor picture as context for your own decisions instead of a source of anxiety. Tools like Metaintro can help you stay close to where roles are actually opening, so that whatever the next round of figures shows, you are already pointed at the more resilient corners of the market.

People Also Asked

Q: How many jobs did the immigration crackdown cost?

A: A Brookings Institution analysis estimates the 2025 enforcement surge cost 668,000 jobs across the 86 US cities it studied. The figure comes from comparing employment trends in high-enforcement cities against places with little change in arrest activity.

Q: Did US-born workers lose jobs because of immigration enforcement?

A: Yes. Brookings estimates that between 51,000 and 297,000 of the 668,000 lost jobs would otherwise have been held by American-born workers, and a separate NBER study found that one US-born man lost work for every six undocumented male workers who left the labor force.

Q: Which industries were hit hardest by the enforcement surge?

A: Construction took the biggest hit and lost more jobs than its immigrant share alone would predict. Arts, entertainment, and other consumer-facing sectors also declined sharply as local spending fell, with Los Angeles neighborhoods seeing spending drop 20 to 25 percent.

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