Just a Bunch of Charts Depicting Immigrants Coming to America
The U.S. benefits from immigration but policy reforms needed to maximize gains: Recommendations and a review of key issues to ensure fair wages and labor standards for all workers, Economic Policy Institute
– by Daniel Costa, Josh Bivens, Ben Zipperer, and Monique Morrissey
Migrants and immigrants who resided in the United States in 2022 accounted for 13.8% of the population, as measured by the American Community Survey (ACS). The ACS is perhaps the most commonly used source for the size of the foreign-born population. However, we can get slightly more timely data from a different data source, the Current Population Survey (CPS). The CPS is also the most cited source of data on labor market trends in the United States. Because of this, we also show CPS-based trends in the annual foreign-born shares of the U.S. population in Figure A. In 2023, this share was 14.9%.
Because so many debates around immigration center around its effect on U.S. labor markets, in Figure B we also present the number and share of immigrants in the overall labor force, defined as those ages 16 and older who are working or seeking jobs. As of last year, the U.S. workforce had 31.0 million immigrants, or 18.6% of the total U.S. labor force. Since 2000, immigrants have been more likely to be in the labor force than U.S-born workers, largely reflecting the fact that immigrants are younger and more likely to be of working age than the U.S. born population,
Immigrant flows have fluctuated greatly in recent years. During the beginning of the Trump administration and also the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, immigration slowed due to border closures and other restrictions. As those restrictions were lifted, a strong U.S. labor market and high employer demand for workers coincided with a reestablishment of the administrative elements of the immigration system and higher immigration flows. Immigration flows over the last two years have been relatively high according to some estimates, prompting calls for more immigration enforcement at the U.S. southern border and restrictions on asylum, and discussions about the number of new arrivals that the U.S. economy can absorb.
However, Figure C shows that while recent flows of migrants and immigrants into the United States have been high, the number of immigrants residing in the United States at any given point is growing at a rate similar to other periods of high immigration like the late 1990s. The decennial censuses estimated that the foreign-born (immigrant) population grew by 4.6% annually between 1990 and 2000. Between 1994 and 2000, the immigrant population in the CPS grew by 5.6% annually. In contrast, recent data from the CPS show that the 2022–2023 immigrant population growth rate was 3.7%.
Recently there has been some debate as to whether the CPS may underestimate recent growth in immigration levels.3 After making an adjustment to account for this undercount, the CBO (2024) estimated significantly higher immigration levels using CPS data, but even with this adjustment, the modified CBO/CPS flows between 2022 and 2023 are still lower than estimates from the late 1990s. The modified CBO/CPS immigrant population growth between 2022 and 2023 was 4.8%, compared with an annual rate of 5.6% between 1994 and 2000 using the unmodified CPS.4
The rates in Figure C also show how U.S.-born population growth has been declining, from 0.9% annually in the 1990s to 0.2% in 2022–2023.
Figure D examines this in more detail, focusing on the prime-age labor force—i.e., those who are ages 25 through 54 and employed or seeking work. Over the last three decades, the total size of the U.S.-born prime-age labor force has essentially stayed the same. In fact, were it not for immigration, the total prime-age U.S. labor force would have stagnated: Over 95% of the cumulative growth of the labor force in the past three decades is due to immigration.
Occupations that rely heavily on immigrants
In 2023, immigrants were about 18.6% of U.S. employment, and many immigrants are disproportionately concentrated within a select number of occupations. Table 1 shows the top-ten major occupation groups with the highest shares of immigrants. These occupations have immigrant shares of employment ranging from about 21% to 40%, and together they comprise just over half (54%) of all employed immigrants in 2023.
Immigrants are often associated with agricultural occupations—and they do comprise two-thirds of the workforce in crops (Fung et al. 2023), but because of the relatively small total size of agricultural occupations overall, most immigrants work in other types of jobs. For example, in 2023, 2.2 million immigrants were employed in “Building and grounds cleaning and maintenance” occupations, like janitors, custodial workers, and landscapers, accounting for 40% of employment in the occupation. For the purpose of comparison, the 2.2 million immigrants in the occupation is the roughly the same number of all hired farmworkers, including immigrants and U.S.-born citizens (USDA 2024). Immigrants were also about one out of every four (24%) workers in “Healthcare support occupations,” which include jobs like home care aides and nursing, dental, and medical assistants.
While immigrants work in some high-paying occupations, many of the occupations in which immigrants are disproportionately concentrated typically pay low wages. Table 1 shows that a majority of the top-ten occupation groups with higher shares of immigrants have median hourly wage rates that are substantially lower than the national median wage. For example, building and grounds cleaning and maintenance workers, who had a national median wage of $17 an hour in 2023, were paid 32% less than the 2023 national median wage of $25 per hour.
AB: Since the US reproduction is substantially less than replacement rate, it is important to have a substantial number of people coming to America to fulfill those jobs needing to be done.