Why the Departure of 1 Million Foreign Workers Could Affect You

1 Million Foreign-Born Workers Leave the Payrolls

Protestors (left) facing the California National Guard (right) after six days of riots in Los Angeles. Image by U.S. Northern Command via Wikimedia Commons.

Follow the money. Protests matter, but pay attention to the payroll data, a far more accurate gauge of immigration, politics, and the U.S. economy.

Media coverage, social media, and polling are easy to twist, but changes in raw numbers of workers collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics show real, measurable change.

Remember This One Stat: It Explains Key Political and Economic Changes Happening Right Now

Biases (including our reaction to and use of data) can easily shape assumptions, but here is one key statistic showing the actual impact of the transition from Joe Biden to the second Donald Trump administration:

The Washington Post last week reported (in one sentence buried midway through a news story) that the latest U.S. jobs report for May showed, “More than a million foreign-born workers have exited the workforce since March.”

Stop. Rewind: 1 million American workers who were born outside the United States (immigrants) left the workforce. How many of them went via deportations and self-deportations? About a 10th or less.