How Will We Fill Our Jobs
In a Washington Post Op-Ed with Richard Vedder, Stephen Moore wrote that Trump cannot achieve his economic goals without more immigration.
Moore was one of the economists that Trump listened to in his first term. With Larry Kudlow, he shaped the 2017 tax cuts into law. He is a veteran of the Heritage Foundation. While he no longer is a frequent White House policy advisor, Moore like Trump believes in the “trickledown theory” of economics that espouses that tax cuts pay for themselves.
Surprisingly, Moore and I agree that without continued and increased immigration, our current workforce will be unable to meet the demand for labor. The simple fact is baby boomers are retiring now at 10,000 a day. There is nowhere near that number of native-born Americans entering the workforce.
A study that Moore did claims the U.S. economy is already very dependent on immigrants. The study states that over half of all new civilian workers over the past decade have been immigrants. About half of the six million entered the country legally. In the coming decades, all the net increases in the American workforce will be filled with immigrants or it will begin to shrink.
Since most immigrants come between the ages of 18–64 with the overwhelming majority arriving in their 20s and 30s, their dependence on the social safety net is very low. They are what Moore calls “instant workers” contributing much more than what they take from the economy. In 2025, there are currently 8 million job openings and that number will only grow as American retirements accelerate.
How will Trump fill the jobs by not only deporting those who crossed the border illegally but also those who came through a variety of visa programs. Those jobs range from PhD to farmworker. His fantasy of a 100% American-born workforce is unattainable. All one needs to do is look at our birth rate.
A recent paper by the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas states that a sharp tightening of immigration has the potential to substantially reduce output growth. The model is based on historical data on immigration from 1955 to 2019. “U.S. GDP growth typically increases for two years in response to an unexpected increase in net unauthorized immigration before gradually reverting to its mean. Inflation shows almost no response in the first few years but decreases slightly at longer horizons.”
President Trump’s policy to significantly reduce border crossings is overall a good thing. However, without much more legal immigration, our overall growth rate will significantly slow down. If 500,000 people are deported in 2026 and the same for 2027, our GDP will be 1.5% lower. And if there truly will be a million people deported a year, by 2027 then another 1.5% drop in GDP should be expected.
If Trump wants to lessen having agricultural as well as manufacturing imports, his administration is working at cross purposes. Our entire economy is not based on cheap immigrant labor but on immigrant labor. There are not enough Americans to fill the jobs in today’s market never mind an expanding one.
America’s economic plan conceived by Trump is not rational. Our goals for decreased immigration, collection of taxes, and increased economic output are incongruous with the facts. It is in other words…Bonkers.
