Economics
Trump Deportation Threats to Constrict Already-Tight Job Market
- Workers contribute equivalent of Massachusetts to U.S. economy
- Will be ‘hard to fill these jobs’ if employees are deported
How Much Will Deportation Weigh on the U.S. Job Market?
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President Donald Trump’s sweeping crackdown on undocumented immigrants will strain an already tight U.S. job market, with one study suggesting that removing all of them would cost the economy as much as $5 trillion over 10 years.
That represents the contribution of the millions of unauthorized workers to the world’s largest economy, about 3 percent of private-sector gross domestic product, according to a recent paper issued by the National Bureau of Economic Research. At an average of $500 billion in output a year, removing all such immigrants would be like lopping off the equivalent of Massachusetts from the U.S. economy, said study co-author Francesc Ortega.