American Workers Are Winning as the Foreign Worker Pool Shrinks
The early economic returns on President Trump’s immigration enforcement are unambiguous: American workers are winning. After decades of being told that mass immigration was an economic necessity, the data from Trump’s first eight months in office tell a different story—one where reducing foreign worker competition translates directly into higher wages and improved living standards for native-born Americans.
The numbers are stark and revealing. The foreign-born workforce has contracted by nearly one million workers since January, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday. This represents a complete reversal of the 2024 trend, when foreign-born workers provided essentially all U.S. job growth, adding over 2 million positions to their ranks.
What happened when that foreign worker flood was turned off? Exactly what basic economic theory predicts: wages rose, and rose meaningfully.
The Labor Economics of Immigration Enforcement
Average hourly earnings have jumped 1.8 percent from January to August, an annualized growth rate of 3.1 percent. But the real story lies with production and non-supervisory workers—the 80 percent of the workforce most likely to compete directly with foreign-born labor. Their wages have risen 2.0 percent over seven months, annualizing to 3.4 percent growth.
These aren’t just nominal gains being eaten away by inflation. With consumer prices rising only 1.2 percent over the same period, American workers have seen genuine purchasing power increases. Production workers alone have gained nearly 0.8 percentage points in real wage growth—meaning their paychecks buy more goods and services than they did at the start of the year.
The August employment report underscores this trend. Despite weaker than expected jobs growth, production workers saw monthly wage growth of 0.4 percent, which annualizes to a robust 4.7 percent. This acceleration coincides precisely with the tightening labor market created by immigration enforcement.
This is not mysterious. It’s just Econ 101. Reduce the supply of workers, and the price of labor (wages) is likely to rise. For decades, immigration advocates have obscured this basic relationship with complex theories about complementary skills and job creation. That’s even more true when employers are forced to hire natives and permanent residents who cannot be partially compensated with U.S. residency because they already have the right to live here. The Trump administration’s natural experiment in immigration restriction has cut through the academic fog with real-world results.
Productivity Gains Trump Immigration Dependency
Critics warned that reducing foreign worker flows would crater economic growth. Instead, American businesses are responding exactly as economic theory suggests: by becoming more productive rather than simply hiring more bodies.
Labor productivity surged 3.3 percent in the second quarter, suggesting that companies faced with tighter labor markets are investing in efficiency improvements, technology, and higher-skilled processes. Rather than relying on an endless supply of low-wage foreign workers, businesses are being forced to compete for American workers—and that competition drives both wages and productivity higher.
This also explains why slower job growth doesn’t signal the same kind of economic weakness it would have pre-Trump. Federal Reserve economists estimate that the monthly job creation needed to maintain stable unemployment has plummeted from around 150,000 before Trump’s policies to perhaps 30,000-80,000 today. When you’re not adding hundreds of thousands of foreign workers to the labor force each month, you need far fewer new jobs to maintain equilibrium.
The August report’s 22,000 job gain was certainly disappointing. But it is less catastrophic than it would have been if we needed 150,000 jobs to keep unemployment from rising.
America First: A Sustainable Economic Model
The implications extend far beyond immediate wage gains. The Trump administration has demonstrated that American economic growth doesn’t require endless infusions of foreign workers willing to work for below-market wages. Instead, it can be driven by productivity improvements, technological advancement, and genuine competition for American labor.
This model is economically sustainable in ways that immigration-dependent growth never was. Rather than requiring ever-increasing flows of foreign workers to maintain expansion, productivity-driven growth becomes self-reinforcing. Higher wages attract more Americans into the workforce, while businesses invest in efficiency improvements that boost long-term competitiveness.
The Federal Reserve faces a similar recalibration. Traditional models that assume constant workforce demographics are obsolete when immigration policy creates structural labor market changes. The central bank’s focus on unemployment rates and job creation needs updating for an economy where American workers finally have leverage in wage negotiations.
Looking Ahead to the Midterms
These economic results couldn’t come at a better time politically. Heading into the 2026 midterms, Republicans can point to concrete, measurable improvements in working-class Americans’ living standards as a direct result of immigration enforcement. The Democratic Party’s continued advocacy for mass immigration looks increasingly tone-deaf when confronted with evidence that their policies suppress American wages.
The business community, long addicted to cheap foreign labor, is adapting faster than expected. Rather than the economic catastrophe immigration advocates predicted, companies are discovering that higher productivity and better worker retention often offset higher labor costs. The result is a more stable, higher-wage economic model that benefits American workers without destroying business profitability.
Importantly, Trump’s trade policies mean that more of the capital investment made by businesses will be spent within our borders instead of leaking out to foreign technology manufacturers. That creates a virtuous economic circle in which demand for great productivity leads to greater demand for U.S. production.
Trump’s immigration enforcement has delivered something rare in American politics: a policy that does exactly what its supporters promised. American workers have more bargaining power, higher wages, and improved living standards. That’s not just good economics—it’s good politics, and it’s exactly what voters were promised when they elected an America First president.
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