President Trump made it clear in his address to voters: In 2024, he promised to bring back the American dream. deport immigrants”Taking jobs from American workers and reducing their wages” was an essential part of the plan.
A few years later, the effects of this policy are now visible on the labor market. January data from the Census Bureau recorded a historic decline in net international migration, from a peak of 2.7 million people in 2024 to an estimated 321,000 by mid-2026. Brookings puts this number even lowerand said the U.S. could see negative net migration this year.
Economists previously told Assets that this changing pattern has helped stabilize the U.S. unemployment rate as demand has declined in recent years and the rate has remained stable at 4.1% in recent years latest data. But Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s, recently found that foreign-born unemployment fell below native-born unemployment in October 2025, based on analysis of a 12-month moving average of seasonally adjusted data.
The decline in unemployment among foreign-born people is relatively easy to explain, says Zandi Assets: The immigrant workforce is shrinking due to White House policies, and unemployment for this population is relatively lower as a result.
The rise in native-born unemployment is more complex. A key reason for this is that the demand for workers has generally fallen, says Zandi Assets– So it stands to reason that if U.S.-born workers now made up a larger share of the labor force, this cohort would be more affected by changes in demand.
But there’s also the problem that the careers and wages immigrants commit to are not viewed in the same way by native workers.
The The Bureau of Labor Statistics writes that in 2025, foreign-born workers were more likely than native-born workers to be employed in sectors such as construction, trucking and natural resources, and health and personal care. Average weekly earnings for full-time foreign-born workers are also lower — immigrants earn 85.7% of the wages of their native-born counterparts, the BLS finds.
President Trump’s theory is being tested: Even if native-born Americans have less competition for jobs, they still don’t seem to want the jobs.
“It just shows how difficult a lot of these jobs are,” Zandi said. “Native-born workers would accept them, but it would require much, much higher wages… [and that] would make it uneconomical for companies to actually produce what they do.”
“These jobs tend to be very difficult, very strenuous jobs that require a lot of physical exertion, and the native-born workers simply haven’t done these jobs in quite some time and are in no mood to take them now – especially at these wages.”
Social framework
There is also a lack of skills and awareness of the jobs typically performed by immigrants, Zandi explains: “These jobs have been done by immigrants for years, decades, generations, and native-born workers have neither the preference nor the skills to be able to do these jobs – at least not in the foreseeable future.”
“Over time that can change, but that’s not the case today. There are all sorts of barriers to locals taking these jobs because … that’s not even in their thought process.”
Zandi added: “In many cases it goes beyond the job itself, some of the jobs are … in very remote areas of the country where housing conditions are very different and other amenities and services are just not available. So it goes beyond the job and it’s about the infrastructure and the support for the people living there. So immigrant workers have been willing to do this, but locals traditionally haven’t, and it’s going to take a lot to get them to do it.”
The White House insists the plan is working. Spokesman Kush Desai said Assets: “Uncontrolled illegal immigration has long depressed the wages of American workers. Thanks to President Trump’s sensible border security and immigration agenda, real wages of American workers in key sectors, including construction, manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, are skyrocketing relative to overall wage growth.”
“The simple reality is that President Trump is delivering.”
New York Fed data provides some support for this claim. The regional Federal Reserve Bank reported in May that public administration and the construction and mining industries saw wage increases, either due to demand related to building AI data centers or due to D.C. policies, “particularly as the construction industry tends to rely on immigrants.”
Still, the report found that most industries have experienced a synchronized decline in wage growth since 2022.
Zandi suspects that immigration policy will be forced to make a U-turn in the coming years, but that the immediate impact of the labor market conflict will be stagflationary. He assumes that prices will rise without a corresponding increase in production.
“The supply-side stagflationary shock of tariffs does the same thing,” he added. “The Iran war is also a stagflationary shock or a supply shock. So you have these three massive, policy-induced supply shocks that are reducing growth and driving up inflation, and the only reason the economy isn’t completely in shambles is artificial intelligence.”