Deporting Undocumented Workers: Impacts on the U.S. Labor Market

By Mels de Zeeuw and Gad Levanon

As the United States prepares for a significant shift in immigration policy under the incoming administration, the spotlight turns to a critical yet opaque segment of the labor market: undocumented immigrants. Representing an estimated 14 million individuals, this group plays an outsized role in various occupations and regions across the country. However, their labor market contributions and the potential consequences of mass deportations remain hindered by incomplete data and analysis. What will the likely deportation changes mean for the labor market?

Understanding the distinct labor market dynamics of undocumented workers extends beyond academic interest—it is a pressing necessity to inform both policymakers and the public about the tangible consequences of proposed immigration policies. As deportation efforts are set to escalate, this analysis seeks to highlight the varied impacts across different regions, occupations, and industries.

Towards the end of this document, we elaborate on the methodology we use. We acknowledge the limitations of this methodology, including potential misclassification of undocumented ACS respondents and uncertainties in external population estimates. We have done our best to produce the most reliable and transparent estimates possible based on the available data. To estimate labor market statistics on undocumented immigrants in the United States, we utilized the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) 2023 1-year estimates and applied a series of proxy measures to identify likely unauthorized immigrants among non-citizen respondents based on legal residency indicators such as spousal immigration status, occupations, benefits, and immigration timelines. To ensure representativeness, we adjusted ACS data using Department of Homeland Security (DHS) population estimates and Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections on net-inflows of unauthorized immigrants. Through raking we aligned the survey weights with population distributions of undocumented immigrants by age, sex, state, and country of origin.

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Key findings:

·?????? Undocumented workers constitute an estimated 7.2% of the U.S. workforce, or 9 million workers, but are disproportionately represented in certain states, such as California (12.0%), Texas (10.4%), and Nevada (9.9%); and in certain MSAs like Yakima, WA (27.9%), and Salinas, CA (22.3%).

·?????? Undocumented workers were most concentrated in occupational groups like agriculture (40.9%), construction (18.8%), and cleaning and groundskeeping (18.2%). More granularly, jobs like construction laborers (28.2%), miscellaneous agricultural workers (46.6%), and maids and housekeeping cleaners (26.4%) rely heavily on undocumented workers, underlining the potential for significant labor disruptions in these sectors with increased deportations.

·?????? Southern border states—California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas—employ 45.8% of all undocumented workers in the U.S, with particularly large undocumented worker concentrations in various construction, agriculture, trucking, and hospitality jobs.

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Between 2013 and 2023, the estimated undocumented immigrant population in the United States exhibited notable fluctuations, as shown in Figure 1. During the first Trump administration (2017 through 2020), the population declined from 11.58 million in 2016 (3.6% of the U.S. population) to a low of 10.86 million in 2020 (3.3%). This decrease reflects the administration’s stricter immigration enforcement policies. However, the current administration (2021 through 2023) marked a significant reversal, with the undocumented immigrant population surging to 14.09 million by 2023, representing 4.2% of the U.S. population—the highest level in over a decade.

The US labor market included an estimate 9 million undocumented immigrants employed in 2023, some 7.2% of the total employed workforce. Undocumented immigrants are slightly less frequently unemployed, at 3.9% compared to 4.3% across the U.S. labor force as a whole; and they have a higher labor force participation rate at 76.4%, compared to 63.8% across the U.S. population.

Undocumented immigrants workers are much more frequently Hispanic, at 74.7% of workers, compared to 19.1% of the total U.S. workforce, and are slightly more frequently Asian, at 13.2% of undocumented workers, compared to 6.6% across all U.S. workers. Undocumented immigrant workers have significantly lower educational attainment than the U.S. workforce overall, with 37.4% of those 25 or older having obtained less than a high school degree, compared to just 7.4% of the U.S. workforce, and 13.6% having obtained a Bachelor’s degree, and 10.8% a graduate or professional degree, compared to 25.3% and 16.9% of the U.S.’ workforce, respectively.

The data further highlights the disproportionate representation of prime-age workers (ages 25-54) among undocumented immigrants compared to the overall U.S. workforce. While prime-age workers constituted 63.8% of the total U.S. workforce, they account for an overwhelming 82.6% of undocumented workers. This is especially pronounced among males, where prime-age men represent 51.4% of undocumented workers compared to just 33.7% of the U.S. workforce. Male undocumented workers aged 35-44 are particularly overrepresented, making up 22% of undocumented workers compared to 11.7% of the total U.S. workforce. Female undocumented workers aged 35-44 also stand out, comprising 12.7% of undocumented workers compared to 10.3% of the overall U.S. workforce.?

Geographic variation in undocumented employment

We estimate that undocumented immigrants accounted for 7.2% of total U.S. employment in June 2023, but this share varied significantly by state, as illustrated in Figure 2. States such as California (12.0%) and Texas (10.4%) far exceeded the national average, reflecting their substantial reliance on undocumented labor in industries like agriculture, construction, and hospitality. Other states, including Nevada (9.9%) and New Jersey (8.6%), also stood out with high shares of undocumented workers in their labor force. In contrast, states like New Hampshire (1.0%) and Minnesota (1.4%) that are farther removed from the southern border reported much lower shares, highlighting the uneven distribution of undocumented employment across the country.

Notably, it appears that proximity to the southern border is not the only determinative factor, as illustrated by New Mexico (4.4%) and Arizona (6.3%). These disparities underscore the complex mix of factors that lead to larger groups of undocumented immigrants settling and working in various states, including tough enforcement policies (laws like Arizona’s SB1070), economic opportunity in specific industries, urbanization, and pre-existing immigrant communities.

As figure 3 illustrates, undocumented immigrant employment varied widely across Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in 2023, with some regions exhibiting shares far above the national. Leading the list is Yakima, WA, where undocumented immigrants make up 27.9% of the workforce, largely driven by the area’s heavy reliance on agricultural labor. Yakima farms produce significant shares of the US’ apples, other tree fruits, hops, hay, livestock, and milk outputs.[1] Similarly, Salinas, CA (22.3%) and Santa Maria-Santa Barbara, CA (22.1%) highlight California’s central role as an agricultural powerhouse that depends on undocumented labor for labor-intensive crop production. Salinas, for instance, is one of the top agricultural producing areas in the U.S., with its farms producing significant shares of the U.S.’ lettuce and strawberry growth, and with Monterey county having the highest crop sales in the U.S.[2]

In Texas, the McAllen-Edinburg-Mission MSA (20.8%) and Laredo (18.5%) showcase the state’s dependence on undocumented workers in a combination of agricultural and service-based industries, amplified by its proximity to the U.S.-Mexico border. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA, despite a lower share (14.5%), stands out in terms of total undocumented immigrant employment, with an estimated almost 940,000 workers, reflecting the sheer scale and diversity of economic activity in this densely populated region. Houston and Dallas too are large hubs of undocumented immigrant employment at 490,000 and 513,000 respectively.

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Undocumented employment across occupations

In June 2023, the distribution of undocumented immigrant employment across occupational groups reveals striking differences, with certain sectors heavily reliant on undocumented labor. Farming, fishing, and forestry occupations stand out, with an estimated 40.9% of all workers in these fields being undocumented immigrants. Construction and extraction occupations (18.8%) and building and grounds cleaning and maintenance occupations (18.2%) also exhibit high reliance on undocumented labor, reflecting their accessibility to workers without legal authorization and the high demand for manual labor in these industries. These occupations employ the largest numbers of undocumented immigrants, at almost 1.5 and 1 million workers, respectively. Food preparation and serving-related occupations (9.3%) and production occupations (8.9%) round out the top five, further emphasizing the critical role undocumented immigrants play in physically demanding and labor-intensive roles.

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Examining more granular occupations patterns further illustrates how the economic impacts of deportation efforts will likely create disproportionate disruptions in the labor market. The detailed view of undocumented immigrant employment across occupations in 2023, as depicted in Figure 4, underscores their critical role in specific job types. Occupations tied to agriculture and construction dominate the top of the list in terms of employment share. Graders and sorters of agricultural products lead with an astounding 52.7% of all workers in this role estimated to be undocumented, followed closely by drywall installers and ceiling tile installers (49.5%) and miscellaneous agricultural workers (46.6%). These roles typically involve physically demanding tasks and have historically faced challenges in attracting native-born workers.

?In terms of total numbers, construction laborers employ the highest count of undocumented workers, with an estimated 535,000 individuals, followed by maids and housekeeping cleaners (344,000) and miscellaneous agricultural workers (325,000). These occupations collectively illustrate the significant reliance on undocumented labor in industries central to food production, housing construction, and service provision, and illustrates the vulnerability of these sectors to policy shifts and large scale deportations.

Distribution of the top 5 undocumented immigrant employment occupations

In 2023, undocumented immigrants made up 14% of all workers in the top five occupational groups where they are most represented: Farming, Fishing, and Forestry; Construction and Extraction; Building and Grounds Cleaning and Maintenance; Food Preparation and Serving Related; and Production Occupations. However, the share varies significantly across states, with the highest concentrations found in California (28.8%) and Texas (27.8%), followed closely by Nevada (26.5%), Maryland (23.2%), and New Jersey (24.5%).

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California is a significant agricultural hub in the U.S., likely see such high shares because of the demand for labor-intensive tasks in farming, where undocumented workers are prevalent. Similarly, Maryland and New Jersey’s high shares might be attributed to relatively high reliance on building maintenance, food service, and other urban-centric occupations in densely populated regions. Nevada has robust hospitality and construction sectors, and Texas is one of the leading states in terms of home construction in the past decade, all of which may explain the outsized presence of undocumented immigrant labor in these sectors of their workforce.

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?A deeper dive into Southern border state trends

The four states on the Southern border, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, employ 45.8% of all undocumented immigrants working in the U.S. The data highlights significant regional reliance on undocumented immigrant labor in Southern border states for specific occupations. Construction jobs are a particularly striking example. Some 251,000 undocumented workers are employed as construction laborers in Southern border states, making up 44.8% of this occupation’s total employment, compared to 28.2% nationally. Similarly, drywall installers (65.6%, or 30,000 workers) painters, construction and maintenance (53.2%, 82,000 workers) and roofers (49.4%, 31,000 workers) demonstrate the vital role of undocumented workers in labor-intensive construction trades. These discrepancies reflect the construction boom in border states, particularly Arizona and Texas, where economic growth and proximity to immigration routes amplify the demand for immigrant labor.

Agricultural roles such as miscellaneous agricultural workers show even higher shares of undocumented employment than most construction roles (57.5%, 153,000 workers) compared to the national average of 46.6%, particularly in places like California’s Central Valley. This highlights the reliance on undocumented labor for harvesting and other farm activities. Service-based roles, including maids and housekeeping cleaners (44.9%, 158,302 workers) and chefs and head cooks (27.8%, 188,229 workers), reflect the importance of immigrant labor in hospitality-heavy urban areas like Los Angeles and Houston.

Industrial and logistics-focused roles such as welding, soldering, and brazing workers (27.4%, 39,543 workers), industrial truck and tractor operators (27.5%, 45,206 workers) also stand out. These roles are critical in Texas’s energy and manufacturing sectors, where labor demands are high. The scale of employment in these occupations emphasizes how deeply integrated undocumented workers are in key sectors of the Southern border state economies, and show that stricter immigration policies will likely have an outsized impact here.

Likelihood of Deportation

The likelihood of deportations will vary significantly across geographies and occupations, heavily influenced by the political landscape and the degree of cooperation between local authorities and federal immigration enforcement. Republican-led states and counties, particularly those without sanctuary policies, are expected to experience higher levels of deportations. These areas will align more closely with federal enforcement priorities by the Trump administration and are likely to provide greater access to local law enforcement resources or to comply with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainers. Conversely, Democratic-led states and local governments with strong sanctuary policies are likely to resist federal efforts, creating a patchwork of enforcement outcomes across the country.

In states like Texas and Florida, both with Republican leadership, deportations are likely to target areas with high concentrations of undocumented workers. Texas, in particular, stands out for its proximity to the southern border and its reliance on undocumented labor in agriculture, construction, and logistics. Though urban centers like Houston and Dallas, which house large numbers of undocumented workers are expected to hinder federal enforcement efforts, more rural and agricultural regions, particularly those along the border which have been moving rightward politically, are expected to see heightened enforcement activity. Similarly, Florida’s tourism-heavy hospitality industry, particularly in cities like Naples (9.8% of employment is comprised of undocumented immigrants) and Miami (7.6%), are at significant risk due to the state’s general support for immigration enforcement, and increasingly conservative local politics.

Additionally, other states with Republican governors like Nevada and Georgia are likely to experience increased deportations, particularly in industries like hospitality, construction and agriculture, where undocumented workers play an outsized role. Suburban and rural areas within these states, where local law enforcement will actively assist federal authorities, are likely to experience more deportations.

Within Democratic controlled states, Republican-leaning areas in the Central Valley—such as Kern County and the broader Bakersfield MSA (14.4% of employment in which is comprised of undocumented immigrants) —may see greater cooperation with federal authorities, though they will be constrained by state-level sanctuary policy.

By contrast, Democratic strongholds such as New York, Illinois, and large portions of California are expected to resist federal enforcement efforts. Sanctuary policies in these areas limit local law enforcement cooperation, reducing the likelihood of widespread deportations. For instance, California’s sanctuary state policy under the California Values Act (SB54) prohibits local law enforcement from sharing information or resources with ICE. This divergence creates an uneven enforcement landscape, where undocumented workers in Republican-led areas face significantly higher risks than those in Democratic-controlled regions, even within the same occupations.

?Labor Market Impact

Large-scale deportations can have serious consequences for the labor market. Companies most affected are those with a high share of undocumented workers, often in conservative areas where deportation measures could be more aggressive. While sudden labor supply shocks are rare—comparable to those during wartime conscription or the COVID-19 pandemic—the short-term effects can be profound.

Industries losing a large portion of their workforce could see immediate labor shortages and higher wages, pushing up operating costs. However, the overall impact on labor cost growth is moderated by the fact that these workers are typically low-paid, constituting a smaller share of total labor expenses. Consumers will notice price increases for certain goods and services.

In the long run, employers facing persistent labor gaps may adopt technology to automate tasks previously done by manual labor, thereby boosting productivity but requiring higher capital investments. Meanwhile, native-born workers may join the labor force in greater numbers or even migrate to states with stricter deportation policies if wage opportunities become more attractive. These shifts could lead to reduced wage inequality, as lower-end wages rise faster amid tighter labor market conditions.

Overall, large-scale deportations represent a key challenge for industries dependent on undocumented labor, prompting both short-term disruptions and longer-term structural changes in how businesses and workers adapt to a more constrained labor supply.

?Conclusion

The findings presented in this analysis highlight the profound integration of undocumented immigrant workers into the U.S. labor market. With over 14 million individuals and 9 million employed, undocumented workers account for 7.2% of the U.S. workforce. Undocumented workers skew toward prime-age males, with 73.6% of undocumented workers aged 25-54, compared to 54.2% of the general workforce, which reflects the physical demands of many of the roles undocumented immigrants fill.

?Crucially, undocumented workers are concentrated in specific states, industries, and occupations. States such as California, Texas, and Nevada; and metropolitan areas like Yakima, Washington, and Salinas, California, which contain outsized shares of agriculture, construction, and hospitality jobs. Similarly, occupations that require physical labor or low-skilled service work—such as construction laborers, maids, and agricultural workers—exhibit the highest shares of undocumented employment, showcasing the outsized role these workers play in staffing critical sectors of the economy.

?However, despite the uneven geographic concentration of undocumented workers across geographies and occupations, local and state-level political considerations will likely play an outsized role in how affected these will be by increased deportation efforts by the Trump administration.

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Methodology

To estimate labor market statistics on undocumented immigrants in the United States, we rely on a combination of data sources. For most measures, we rely on the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS)’s 2023 1-year estimates. The ACS is a nationally representative survey that collects detailed information on income, employment, and demographic characteristics. However, while the survey captures non-citizen respondents, it does not explicitly identify unauthorized immigrants, and this group is likely underrepresented due to factors such as survey non-response, misreporting, and sampling limitations.

After identifying non-citizen respondents in the ACS, we proceeded to identify respondents who were most likely legal immigrants by using a series of proxy measures, similar to approaches in other studies.[3] For instance, we considered a respondent a legal immigrant if he or she immigrated to the U.S. prior to 1980; received Social Security or Supplemental Social Security income; were covered by Medicare, Medicaid, military, VA, or other public health insurance; were a veteran; immigrated from Cuba prior to 2017; worked in government or the USPS; worked in occupations likely to require government certifications or security checks, including air traffic controllers, police officers, lawyers, judges, legislators, physicians and surgeons, registered nurses, or served in the military; were likely workers on an R visa; were likely visiting scholars on a J visa; were likely F-1 visa students; were likely H1B or E3 visa holders; immigrated from Afghanistan or Ukraine as of 2020; were food stamp or other welfare recipients; or had a spouse that was a U.S. citizen or likely legal. We then categorized the remaining 39.6% of non-citizen respondents in the ACS as undocumented immigrants.

To attempt to ensure that our estimates accurately represent the unauthorized immigrant population in the United States, we employed a weighting methodology that adjusts the ACS undocumented immigrant observations to align with estimates provided by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on the unauthorized or undocumented immigrant population residing in the United States on January 1st 2022, which is the most recently available data.[4] However, since this population has likely increased between this date and 2024, we complemented the DHS estimates by using Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections on net-inflows of unauthorized immigrants. CBO uses other DHS estimates on port-of-entry, between port-of-entry, and ‘get-aways’ to estimate that the net-inflow of such immigrants was 1.9 million in 2022, and 2.4 million in 2023. We further took the averages of 2023 and 2024 to estimate the total population of undocumented immigrants at about 14.09 million in June 2023.

DHS provides annual estimates of the unauthorized immigrant population disaggregated by country of birth (top 10 and others), state of residence (top 10 and others), age, and sex. We extracted relevant population counts from the DHS reports for 2022. We then adjusted these population counts to 2023, by using the above CBO net-inflow estimates, making the assumption that these were evenly distributed over the DHS population categories. We ensured consistency between the sample data and the population margins by standardizing category names and aligning age group definitions with those used by the DHS.

We then performed raking (iterative proportional fitting) to adjust the survey weights, adjusted these iteratively across the dimensions of sex-age groups, state of residence, and country of birth, aligning the sample distributions with the estimated population margins for 2023.

We acknowledge certain limitations in this methodology. The proxy measures used to identify unauthorized immigrants may not perfectly classify all non-citizen respondents, potentially affecting the representativeness of our sample and the accuracy of our estimates. Additionally, the DHS population estimates, and the CBO net-inflow estimates are themselves subject to uncertainty and potential measurement errors. The distribution of country-of-origin, state-of-residence, and sex and age among undocumented immigrants may have changed between January 2022 and June 2023. Weighting adjustments cannot fully correct for nonresponse or coverage biases inherent in survey data, and the simplification of the survey design in our weighting procedure may overlook some complexities of the ACS’ sampling design.

Despite these limitations, our approach provides a practical method to enhance the representativeness of the ACS’ unauthorized immigrant sample. By adjusting the survey weights to match external population estimates from the DHS and the CBO, we’ve aimed to produce the most accurate possible estimates of the labor market characteristics of unauthorized immigrants.

[1] United States Department of Agriculture, National Agriculture Statistics Service, 2022 Census of Agriculture, County Profile, Monterey County, California.

[2] United States Department of Agriculture, National Agriculture Statistics Service, 2022 Census of Agriculture, County Profile, Yakima County, Washington.

[3] Camarotta, S.A, Richwine, J., Zeigler, K., ‘There Are No Jobs Americans Won’t Do: A detailed look at immigrants (legal and undocumented) and natives across occupations’, Center for Immigration Studies, August, 2018; Passel, J.S., Cohn, D., ‘U.S. Unauthorized Immigrant Total Dips to Lowest Level In A Decade’, Pew Research Center, November, 2018; Van Hook, J., Bachmeier, J.D., Coffman, D., Harel, O., ‘Can We Spin Straw Into Gold? An Evaluation Of Immigrant Legal Status Imputation Approaches’, Demography, February, 2015;? Borjas, G.J., ‘The Labor Supply of Undocumented Immigrants.’, Labour Economics, 46 (2017): pp: 1–13.

[4] Baker, B. and Warren, R., April 2024, U.S. Department of Homeland Security: Office of Homeland Security Statistics, ‘Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: January 2018 – January 2022’.