Full Breakdown
Study Finds Trump Deportation Policy Reduces Jobs Without Raising Wages
5/19/2026, 9:28:18 PM
Study Finds Deportations Reduce Employment in Targeted Sectors
The National Bureau of Economic Research released a study examining the labor market impact of the Trump administration’s intensified deportation operations. Analyzing federal labor data from January to October 2025, the researchers compared U.S. communities that experienced deportation surges with those that did not. The analysis concludes that the surges coincided with measurable job losses across the sectors studied.
Trump Administration's Claim of Job Creation Through Deportations
President Donald Trump has repeatedly asserted that large-scale deportations would free up jobs and raise wages for American-born workers. The administration’s narrative positions the removal of undocumented labor as a mechanism to improve employment prospects for citizens, particularly those without higher education, and to strengthen overall wage growth across the economy.
Methodology: Comparing Communities With and Without Deportation Surges
The NBER team focused on four industries that rely heavily on undocumented labor—agriculture, construction, manufacturing, and wholesale. Using federal labor statistics, they identified communities that experienced deportation surges between January 2025 and October 2025 and matched them with comparable communities lacking such surges. The analysis isolates the labor market effects of the deportation spikes.
Employment Changes by Worker Category
The study reports a 5 percent decline in employment for male undocumented workers across the targeted sectors, and a 1.3 percent decline for male American-born workers without a college degree. Construction emerged as the most affected industry, where American-born workers lost more jobs than the undocumented workers who remained. Overall, the affected industries experienced a 5 percent drop in employment. Wage data showed no statistically significant increase for American workers, indicating that firms did not raise pay to attract domestic labor.
Implications for Immigration Policy and Labor Markets
The findings directly challenge the administration’s central justification for aggressive deportations, indicating that the policy does not generate the promised job gains for citizens and appears to suppress labor demand. By showing that work slowed rather than wages rose, the study calls into question the efficacy of using deportations as an economic tool.
Official Statements on Labor Effects
The administration maintains that removing undocumented workers frees positions for American citizens, a stance reiterated in public remarks by President Trump and senior immigration officials. No new data have been presented to counter the NBER study’s employment figures, and the official narrative continues to emphasize anticipated wage improvements despite the study’s lack of supporting evidence.
Academic Critique and Data Gaps
Economists behind the NBER report argue that the absence of wage increases undermines the premise that deportations create labor market incentives for domestic workers. The study notes that its analysis covers only the short-term period of January–October 2025 and does not assess longer-term employment dynamics or regional variations beyond the community-level comparison, leaving those aspects unaddressed.
