Trump's escalation of deportations could destroy nearly 6 million jobs: Employment losses caused by increasing deportations to 4,000,000 over four years

Sector Immigrant U.S.-born Total Percent fall
in total
employment
Overall 3,316,000 2,571,000 5,887,000 3.6%
Construction 1,405,000 861,000 2,266,000 18.8%
Child care 104,000 444,000 548,000 15.1%
Economic Policy Institute

Note: Calculations assume 1,000,000 deportations annually for four years.

Source: Extrapolations from East et al. (2023); Howard, Wang, and Zhang (2024); and Ali, Brown, and Herbst (2024), as described in the text. Baseline employment levels from EPI (2025) analysis of the 2024 basic monthly Current Population Survey.
View the underlying data on epi.org.