President-elect Donald J. Trump won the White House in part on his promise to control immigration, with targeted policies ranging from deporting criminals to more sweeping policies such as mass deportations. Trump during the campaign End of commitment Temporary Protected Status allows workers from certain countries to come to the United States to work. Experts say if some of the larger evictions, such as reducing the TPS, come to fruition, knock-on effects will be felt across most sectors of the economy, particularly construction, housing and agriculture.
Economists and labor experts are most concerned about the economic impact of policies that deport documented and undocumented workers already in the United States.
Staffing agencies are watching this election especially closely.
“The morning after the election, we sat down as a leadership team and asked what does this mean for talent supply?” said Jason Leverant, president and chief operating officer of AtWork Group, a national franchise-based staffing agency. AtWork provides business staffing to immigrant-heavy verticals such as warehouses, industry and agriculture in 39 states.
Workers — “talent” in industry parlance — are already in short supply. While the worst of the labor crisis caused by the post-COVID-19 economic boom has passed and labor supply and demand have returned to balance in recent months, the number of workers available to fill job openings in the U.S. economy remains a closely watched data point. Employers and economists say mass deportations will exacerbate this economic problem.
“If the proposed immigration policy becomes reality, it could have a significant impact,” Leverante said, noting that a mass deportation program could leave as many as 1 million potential job openings that will be difficult to fill.
How many undocumented immigrants work in the United States?
There are various statistics on the undocumented immigrant population in the United States. The left-leaning Center for American Progress estimates the number at about 11.3 million, 7 million of whom are working. The American Immigration Council is an advocacy group that supports expanded immigration, Reference data According to the American Community Survey, the number of undocumented people in the United States is about 11 million. Figures from the nonpartisan Pew Research Center Close to 8 million people.
“There are millions of undocumented people working in this industry; we don’t have Americans doing the work,” said Chad Prinkey, CEO of Wellbuilt Construction Consulting, which works with construction companies. “We need these workers; we all We want them documented; we want to know who they are and where they are and make sure they pay their taxes; we don’t want them gone.”
Leverante said it is still being determined how to fill the jobs lost due to mass evictions.
“Are we attracting talent from one area to another and then losing them to someone else,” Leverante said. “It’s very important that we stay ahead of the game.”
Leverant said he’s not worried about losing AtWork’s 20,000 employees who are deployed around the country because file status is rigorously checked, but if other companies lose employees, they will rely more on talent agencies like AtWork to find talent already on the job. . Supply and demand determine workers’ wages, and workers’ wages will be forced to rise. This will ripple throughout the supply chain, right up to the supermarket or sporting goods store.
“We’re in a long battle right now and we’re going to feel the pain, we’re going to see shortages, slowdowns and delays on all fronts,” he said.
Limited labor supply can result in products not reaching the market because there are not enough workers to transport them to distribution, or construction projects being delayed.
Labor concerns extend to skilled labor, technology
There are also concerns that stricter immigration policies could negatively impact skilled workers.
“It’s not just a low-skilled labor problem; it’s trickling down to skilled workers and engineers. We don’t have enough skilled people to fill those positions,” Leverante said, adding that he doesn’t think doctors and scientists will be left behind. Round up and round up.
Janeesa Hollingshead, head of expansion at Uber Works, the ride-hailing company’s on-demand human resources arm, agrees that if the past is prologue, technology will suffer.
“The tech industry relies heavily on immigrants to fill high-skilled, critical positions,” Hollinghead said. He recalled that during Trump’s first term as president, Uber told all tech workers on H-1B visas that , if they go back to their home country for vacation, they may not be able to come back.
According to the American Immigration Council, during the first Trump administration, the government’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services A Larger Percentage of H-1B Petitions Are Denied But many rejections were overturned, resulting in the rejection rate falling to 13% in fiscal 2020 compared with 24% in 2018.
Hollinghead said U.S. tech companies will be forced to look for tech talent from talent pools that are currently overlooked in the United States.
“U.S. companies are going to need to figure out how to do this or face even greater labor shortages,” Hollinghead said.
On the eve of the election, Trump said at a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York: “From Day One, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history to drive criminals out of the country.”
“I would not dismiss his mass deportation process as just talk. We have to assume he means what he says,” said David Leopold, chair of the immigration practice group at law firm UB Greensfelder.
Still, despite the possible labor market effects, mass evictions may be difficult to achieve in practice.
“Deporting 11 million people is going to be very expensive,” Leopold said, predicting Trump would use ICE and federal agencies but also rely on local law enforcement to round up immigrants.
exist Telephone interview with NBC NewsShortly after the election results came in, Trump invoked the dark rhetoric about immigration that proved successful during the campaign while saying he was not opposed to people coming into the United States — in fact, he suggested that if his administration’s strategy were to come to fruition, It will take more for companies to do business within the United States to be successful. “We want people to come in,” Trump said. “We’re going to have a lot of businesses coming into our country. They want to come into our country… We want companies, factories, factories and car factories to come into our country and they will come. So we need people, but We don’t necessarily want someone in jail for murdering seven people.
American Immigration Council estimate In a long-term campaign of mass evictions targeting 1 million people per year – said to reflect the “more conservative proposals” put forward by proponents of mass evictions – the annual cost would average $88 billion, for a total cost of $967.9 billion. A journey of more than ten years.
In an interview with NBC News, Trump dismissed concerns about costs. “It’s not about the price tag,” he said. “We have no choice. When people kill and murder, when drug lords destroy countries, now they’re going back to these countries because they’re not going to stay here… There’s no price tag,” Trump said .
Leopold said that depending on the severity of the program, consumers could face changes such as price increases, supply issues and limited access to goods and services.
Building and house damage
Nan Wu, research director at the American Immigration Council, echoed the concerns of others, predicting consumer chaos if deportations increase under Trump.
“Mass deportations will exacerbate ongoing labor shortages in the United States, particularly in industries that rely heavily on undocumented immigrant workers,” Wu said. He cited AIC research that showed the construction industry would lose one in eight workers, Research from the AIC shows that 14% of the construction industry will lose one in eight workers.
“Laying off so many workers in a short period of time will drive up construction costs and cause delays in the construction of new homes, making housing more unaffordable in many parts of China,” Wu said.
The same applies to agriculture, which will lose one in eight workers, she said.
“Looking at specific occupations, about a quarter of farm workers, agricultural graders and sorters are undocumented workers. Losing agricultural workers who plant, pick and package food will harm domestic food production and increase food prices,” Wu explain.
USDA data The share of undocumented farmworkers was 41% in 2018, the latest year for which data is available, with California having the highest rate.
The AIC estimates that U.S. GDP will shrink by $1.1 trillion to $1.7 trillion.
Conservative think tank American Compass advocates “Skills-Based Immigration Policy” It said this requires “rigorous immigration enforcement to prevent people from working illegally. This enforcement needs to proactively respond to future immigration flows and address the millions of illegal workers already here,” it said in a policy brief .
One of its policy priorities is to mandate the use of electronic verification system Penalties imposed by all employers and severe criminal penalties for repeated or willful violations; short-term work permits are provided to illegal immigrants who have been in the country for a substantial period of time, but they are determined based on how long they have been in the country Timetable for having to leave the country; and for those who have lived in the U.S. the longest, permanent legal status can be obtained after paying a hefty fine.
Plinky said the impact of a mass eviction plan would be huge. “One of the natural problems with undocumented workers is we don’t know how many of them are here because they’re undocumented. It’s not simple. I’d bet that half or more of the field labor in a given geographic area is undocumented,” he said.
“If you’re building nuclear facilities or colleges and universities, you’re probably going to be working with very few undocumented workers because the level of regulation is much higher,” Plinky said. “Those industries are going to shrug and move on.” He wants the same treatment for union workers.
But Plinky said it would have a significant impact on single-family and multifamily housing construction, and he believed various sectors of the housing market could be “paralyzed.”
“There will be incredible delays; the average 18-month project could take five years to complete because there are so few bodies,” Plinky said. “This will be no less devastating to Boston than it is to Austin; In Austin, it shuts down everything,” he added.
Despite the dire predictions, Plinky doesn’t think mass evictions will happen. “Donald Trump is a developer; he understands what’s going on. Mass deportations are not possible without severely impacting the economy,” he said.
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