The Republican budget bill would eliminate nearly six million jobs by unleashing Trump’s radical mass deportation agenda
The Trump administration has set a goal of deporting one million immigrants annually. Although they currently lack the resources to meet that target, the Republican budget bill just passed by the Senate would dramatically boost funding for immigration enforcement. Mass deportations will cause grave damage to the economy, with significant job losses for both immigrants and U.S.-born workers. If Congress passes the Republican spending bill and Trump succeeds in carrying out his deportation goals, I estimate that 5.9 million workers will lose their jobs over the next four years. Of those total losses, 3.3 million fewer immigrants and 2.6 million fewer U.S.-born workers will be employed (see Figure A and methodology below).
If Congress approves the Republican budget bill, Trump's mass deportation agenda will destroy nearly six million jobs: Employment reductions after four years of one million annual deportations
| Employment Reductions | |
|---|---|
| Immigrant | 3316000 |
| US-born | 2571000 |
| Overall | 5887000 |
Note: Assuming 670,000 additional annual deportations for four years above a baseline annual deportation rate of 330,000.
Source: Analysis of East et al (2023) as described in the text.
State education funding falls short in too many states, even as they prosper: Southern states, in particular, are neglecting students
State spending on public education declined markedly in the dozen years prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. This decline in funding was a response to the Great Recession since many state governments prioritized spending austerity in the wake of global economic decline. They paired tax cuts with cuts in public services, including education spending, causing a huge contraction in the amount public schools received to educate kids.
While some states managed to expand education spending in the ensuing recovery, many states did not, and in some cases, their education spending relative to their capacity to spend on education, is actually lower than it was before the Great Recession. This is especially the case in the South, where public education spending is declining in real terms (adjusted for inflation), even as Southern states grow more prosperous.
This July, 15 states and localities increase their minimum wage while others claw back gains for workers
On July 1, the minimum wage will increase in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, D.C.—lifting wages for more than 880,000 workers and collectively raising their earnings by more than $397 million (see Figure A). In addition to these two states and D.C., 12 cities and counties are also increasing their minimum wage this summer, including Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.Read more
A personal reflection on the political violence in Minnesota
Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and State Senator John Hoffman are my legislators. On the morning of June 14, a right-wing extremist assassinated Melissa Hortman and her husband. John Hoffman and his wife were shot multiple times in an attempt on their lives; their prognosis is guardedly positive.
I’ve spoken and worked with Melissa and John often over the years, and I always respected their intellect, passion, and basic human decency. I went to Melissa’s house to phone bank for candidates, or to pick up flyers to take door knocking for her. I talked to her many times about policy issues, though it’s not clear to me that I ever taught her anything she didn’t already know. Her biggest passion may have been the environment, and I often wondered that if she had not been Speaker of the House, President Biden might have appointed her to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
I first met John in 2012, when my wife and I held a fundraiser at our home in opposition to a ballot measure that would have banned same-sex marriage. He was then running for his first term in the state Senate, but he didn’t come to campaign—he just wanted to support the cause.
Dave Kamper pictured with Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman.
When I worked for a Minnesota union, John would always drop whatever he was doing to talk to union members I would bring by his Senate office. He would listen with great interest as they talked about their jobs, and he genuinely wanted to understand how proposed policies and legislation would affect their real lives and work.
Melissa, John, and their spouses were shot at a time of increasing right-wing violence. But they’re not just exhibits on a list. Melissa and John played pivotal roles in enacting the kinds of state policies we work on and support here at EPI.
Public colleges are more diverse than ever—but anti-DEI policies threaten that progress
On June 29, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a long-awaited decision striking down the use of race-conscious affirmative action in college admissions—undermining universities’ efforts to maintain diverse and racially inclusive campuses. Since then, the classroom has remained a battleground for equity, with a Department of Education hijacked by Trump’s agenda to end “wokeness” and dismantle diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) initiatives. The administration has also targeted foreign-born students, proposing restrictions that would bar visa-dependent students from enrolling at institutions like Harvard University—or from even entering the country at all.
Anti-equity efforts have also extended beyond the classroom, impeding the ability of federal agencies to uphold civil rights and advance DEIA, both within their institutions and in their broader enforcement work. Still, the war on equity in postsecondary education continues to handicap universities and threatens postsecondary enrollment.Read more
Forget ‘no tax on tips’—increasing the minimum wage would deliver dramatically larger raises for millions more workers without letting employers off the hook
At President Trump’s direction, Congress is considering proposals to exempt tips from taxable income. After Trump floated this gimmick on the campaign trail, Republican and Democratic elected officials alike have embraced the idea. The House Republican budget bill (H.R. 1) includes a “no tax on tips” provision that gives the illusion of helping lower-income workers—while the rest of the legislation hands huge giveaways to the rich at the expense of the working class. The Senate recently passed a standalone version of no tax on tips that similarly provides the false impression of aiding workers while giving employers excuses to incentivize tipped work and keep base wages low.
If the Trump administration and its allies in Congress genuinely wanted to help tipped and lower-paid workers, there are far better options they could pursue, like raising the federal minimum wage. To illustrate this, we compare the estimated impact of no tax on tips with the Raise the Wage Act of 2025, a bill that would raise the federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $17 an hour by 2030 and gradually phase out the tipped minimum wage. Here is an overview of how the two plans compare.
Trump’s crusade against health and safety regulations endangers workers, hobbles the environmental justice movement, and sets the stage for our next public health crisis
What is happening?
The Trump administration is taking a reckless approach to deregulation. In his first day in office, Trump ordered a regulatory freeze, barring departments and agencies from issuing any new regulations and pushing back pending regulations until they could be reviewed by a Trump administration appointee. The administration has issued several additional deregulatory orders, including rescission of Biden administration actions that sought to modernize the regulatory process.Read more
Trump’s attacks on the Department of Labor will hurt wages and working conditions
In just a few months, the Trump administration has demonstrated its willingness to abandon workers and undermine their wages and working conditions. This includes repeated attacks to the Department of Labor (DOL)—the federal agency that oversees federal wage and hour laws, worker safety, workforce development, and employee benefits protection programs. Anti-worker nominations to key DOL positions—currently under Senate consideration—pose future risk to workers’ rights.
In January, Trump rescinded Executive Order 11246, which enforced anti-discrimination protections and equal employment opportunity requirements in federal contracting—effectively halting the work of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs. In March, Trump rescinded an executive order that raised the minimum wage for federal contractors, which could cut these workers’ wages anywhere from 25% to 60%. In early April, the Mine Safety and Health Administration—a DOL subagency—announced they were delaying the enforcement of the Biden-era silica rule for coal miners, increasing the risk of coal miners being exposed to silica dust.
Most recently, Trump’s DOL asked to pause litigation on the Biden-era overtime pay rule, seemingly indicating that the department plans to rescind the rule that expanded the right to overtime pay for 4.3 million workers. DOL also announced it would stop enforcing a Biden-era rule that made it harder for employers to misclassify workers as independent contractors, potentially costing workers thousands of dollars each year.
May jobs report sends mixed signals: Solid payroll gains contrast with a weaker household survey and a continued decline in federal government employment
Below, EPI economists offer their insights on the jobs report released this morning, which showed 139,000 jobs added in May.
House Republican budget bill gives Trump $185 billion to carry out his mass deportation agenda—while doing nothing for workers: Immigration enforcement would have 80 times more funding than labor standards enforcement
House Republicans recently passed Trump’s budget reconciliation legislation that massively redistributes income from some of the poorest households to the richest. It is now under consideration in the Senate and Trump is pressuring senators to pass it without major changes. Aside from cutting taxes by trillions for the wealthy, kicking 15 million people off health care, and cutting food aid for the poor, the bill provides an unfathomable amount of additional money to fund Trump’s draconian mass deportation agenda.
In just a few months, Trump’s deportation troops have repeatedly arrested and deported the wrong people, including U.S. citizens; sent innocent people to gulags designed for terrorists in third countries; separated families and turned children into orphans; detained high school honors students; and engaged in countless other heinous actions. The bill provides $155 billion in new immigration enforcement funding—more than five times the amount of current funding—to supercharge the ability of the Trump administration to carry out more actions like these, as well as further militarize the border and build more miles of the border wall, put immigrants in new and expanded prisons, and carry out worksite raids across the country.
Altogether, as Figure A shows, Trump would have $185 billion for immigration enforcement, and this doesn’t include additional appropriations that Congress could pass in future years. Even with all that spending, there isn’t one new cent in the bill that would go to ensuring that wages and working conditions are protected by increasing funding to the federal agencies that hold lawbreaking employers accountable. In fact, the $185 billion Trump could have at his disposal to carry out his radical immigration enforcement agenda would be 80 times more than the annual government funding for labor standards enforcement. That disparity alone tells you all you need to know about how little the Trump administration prioritizes working people.