Trump crackdown drives 80% plunge in immigrant employment, reshaping labor market, Goldman says

[mahatmakanejeeves]

ECONOMY • IMMIGRATION

Trump crackdown drives 80% plunge in immigrant employment, reshaping labor market, Goldman says

By Nick Lichtenberg
Business Editor
February 17, 2026, 5:11 PM ET

A sweeping crackdown on immigration in President Donald Trump’s second term, characterized by elevated deportations and strict new visa bans, has precipitated an 80% collapse in net immigration to the U.S., according to a new analysis by Goldman Sachs. The report, released Feb. 16, warns the dramatic contraction in the flow of foreign-born workers is fundamentally altering the nation’s labor supply mathematics and lowering the threshold for job growth needed to maintain economic stability.

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[Shellback Squid]

1. I just heard on the radio a local Tile company's ad for laborers, first time I've heard an ad like that

I would guess we'll hear ads for hotel staff and farm laborers..everything is going to go up in pricing

[Botany]

2. And who is going to pick the crops, work as care attendants @ Hospitals and Nursing Homes, do the ..

… commercial roofing, and pack the meat?

[bucolic_frolic]

3. 'lowering the threshold for job growth needed to maintain economic stability'

Always focused on equilibrium. However if we produce less with fewer inputs, won't we be consuming less and find critical output scarce and costing more? Replacing roofs, construction, farm harvests? Migrant labor fills a lot of roles across the year, winter pickings, summer construction for example.

[Freddie]

4. Talk about not looking ahead

The younger generations are having way fewer babies than we did. This is going to catch up to the labor market eventually. Who’s going to do those jobs that need to be done? Who’s going take care of us when we’re elderly? I predict in 20 years the government (providing we have one) is going to be begging good honest people to come here and work.

[al bupp]

5. Both economically and demographically we need immigration

What the administration is doing is bassackwards.

[progree]

6. Found in the archives --

https://archive.ph/ZqrBW#selection-301.0-301.95

. . . While net immigration averaged approximately 1 million people per year during the 2010s, that figure fell to 500,000 in 2025 and is projected to plummet further to just 200,000 in 2026, Goldman said. That represents an 80% decline from the historical baseline, a shift the report attributes directly to aggressive policy changes . . .

. . . Goldman Sachs estimates this “break-even rate” of job growth will fall from its current level of 70,000 jobs per month to just 50,000 by the end of 2026. . . .

. . . Last August, J.P. Morgan Asset Management strategist David Kelly predicted there could very possibly be “no growth in workers at all” over the next five years owing to the change in immigration to the U.S. and the aging of the native-born workforce.

. . . The crackdown may also be pushing the labor market into the shadows, Mericle found. The report suggests that “stricter immigration enforcement pushes more immigrant workers to shift to jobs that fall outside of the official statistics,” potentially skewing federal data. This shift complicates the Federal Reserve’s ability to gauge the true health of the economy, as official payroll numbers may fail to capture the full picture of employment activity.