- Mass deportations could remove 14% of New York’s workforce, involving approximately 470,000 undocumented workers and damaging local economies.
- Labor shortages in construction and agriculture would trigger job losses for U.S.-born workers rather than creating new opportunities.
- Essential services faces disruption, with rising costs for food and care alongside a potential 6.2% national GDP decline by 2026.
(NEW YORK) — A report from the Institute on Immigrant Integration Research and Policy at the Rockefeller Institute of Government, SUNY, found that mass deportations could cost New York up to 14% of its workforce by removing approximately 470,000 undocumented workers from the state labor force.
That loss, the report said, would bring labor shortages, higher living costs and reduced economic activity across the state. It would also cut jobs held by U.S.-born workers rather than expand them.
Construction would absorb some of the sharpest blows. The report said 20% of workers in that sector are non-citizens subject to deportation, including 29,500 undocumented laborers, 12,800 carpenters and 6,200 painters, about 25% of laborers.
Other sectors would also face steep disruptions. Agriculture could lose 40-50% of its workers, transportation 20%, and manufacturing 15%, while direct care services would face the highest absolute impact on the people who rely on them.
Those findings place New York at the center of a broader national debate over whether mass deportations would tighten labor markets enough to lift prospects for U.S.-born workers. The Rockefeller Institute report argues the opposite, linking deportations to job losses, weaker output and a wider strain on families and employers.
Scott Fein, Senior Fellow at the Rockefeller Institute and the report author, said the damage would not stop at the workers removed from payrolls. The losses, the report said, would spread through tax revenue, industries and the communities served by immigrants.
In New York alone, deporting non-citizen workers would lead to a decline of about 40,000 jobs for U.S.-born workers, the report said. It scaled that estimate from research showing 44,000 national job losses per 500,000 deportations, citing East et al. in the Journal of Labor Economics.
The report described several channels for that decline. When immigrant workers lose jobs or leave the labor force, their purchasing power falls, employers lose complementary workers, and some parents reduce their own labor force participation because care workers become harder to find.
That dynamic matters in construction, where jobs often depend on layered teams of workers rather than one-for-one replacement. Fewer laborers can mean fewer supervisors, fewer managers and less work moving through a project pipeline.
Direct care services present a different kind of strain. The report said that sector would face the highest absolute impact on people served, including the elderly, children, human services and hospitals.
A drop in care workers can ripple into other parts of the labor market. Parents and family members may stay home or reduce hours when child care and elder care become less available, cutting labor force participation even among workers who are not directly targeted by deportation policies.
Agriculture would face another sharp pinch. With 40-50% of workers identified as non-citizens subject to deportation, farms could struggle to fill jobs tied to planting, harvesting and distribution.
Transportation and manufacturing would also lose a large share of workers under the report’s assumptions. In transportation, 20% of workers fall into that category, while manufacturing stands at 15%.
National labor market data cited in the report also challenge the claim that deportations create job gains for native-born workers. The unemployment rate for U.S.-born workers rose from 4.0% in 2024 to a 2026 three-month average of 4.3%, with a non-seasonally adjusted rate of 4.6%.
The report said that pattern matched research showing mass deportations correlate with rising unemployment for U.S.-born workers. That runs against arguments that removing immigrant workers automatically opens positions for natives.
Fein’s report placed those labor shifts inside a wider economic picture. Research it cited shows deportations reduce native wages, employment and gross domestic product without creating opportunities for U.S.-born workers.
The losses for native employment cited in the report range from 0.5-3.6%. It also said businesses would shrink under a constrained labor market, pointing to 4.4% unemployment in late 2024.
On a national scale, the report said mass deportations could reduce GDP by 2.6-6.2% over a decade. It also cited a Texas example showing 10% shrinkage.
Those figures point to an economy that contracts rather than adjusts smoothly when large numbers of immigrant workers leave. Employers do not simply replace one pool of labor with another, the report said; they often produce less, expand more slowly or cut back altogether.
Labor shortages would spread far beyond New York. The report projected national shortages of 1.5M in construction, 225K in agriculture, 1M in hospitality, 870K in manufacturing and 461K in transportation.
Such gaps would likely show up in everyday prices. The report said mass deportations would raise costs for food, housing, child care and health aides, while pushing a 9.1% national increase by 2028 and cutting construction growth in half.
That combination could weigh heavily on New York households already facing high living costs. A smaller labor force in construction can slow homebuilding and repairs, while fewer care workers can drive up household expenses for children and older adults.
The tax effects would also run through public finances. The report said states would lose billions from immigrant payroll taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare, and state revenues would decline as workers and spending disappear from local economies.
Family finances would face a deep hit as well. The report said mixed-status household income drops 47%, from $41,300 to $22,000 median, under deportation scenarios it cited.
It added that the United States would face a $118B cost to raise 1/3 of U.S.-born children of deportees, while 1.2M mortgages would be at risk. Those figures tie labor market disruption to housing, public budgets and child welfare.
Health care and support services sit inside that strain. The report said deportations would exacerbate care worker shortages as the 65+ population grows, while family separations would bring mental and physical harm.
New York’s direct care system would therefore face both labor and service pressure at the same time. Fewer workers would be available just as demand for care rises, especially in settings tied to aging, disability, child services and hospitals.
In construction, the numbers are especially concrete. The report identified 29,500 undocumented laborers, 12,800 carpenters and 6,200 painters as workers vulnerable to removal, a scale that could slow residential and commercial projects across the state.
That matters beyond the building trades. Delays in construction can feed through rent, home prices, business openings and infrastructure schedules, adding to the higher living costs the report projected.
Manufacturing and transportation would carry similar knock-on effects. Factories need production workers, warehouses need handlers, and transport systems depend on drivers and logistics staff to keep goods moving.
When those jobs go unfilled, output falls and delivery chains tighten. The report’s broader argument is that mass deportations can weaken sectors that support one another rather than operate in isolation.
For U.S.-born workers, that can mean fewer openings, not more. Employers with smaller workforces may scale back shifts, postpone investment or abandon expansion plans, leaving less work for managers, clerical staff and others who depend on the same business activity.
The report’s findings arrive as the national labor market remains relatively tight by historical standards. Even so, the data it cited showed that unemployment for U.S.-born workers moved higher, not lower, during the period examined.
That point anchors the report’s central conclusion: deportations do not create a clean substitution effect in which native-born workers step easily into removed jobs. Instead, the economy loses workers, consumers and taxpayers at the same time.
In New York, where approximately 470,000 undocumented workers form part of the labor force, the scale of that shift would touch nearly every part of daily life. Homes could cost more to build and maintain, farms and food suppliers could struggle to staff operations, and care systems could serve fewer people.
The report framed those outcomes as a state-level warning about a national policy approach. Remove workers on that scale, it said, and the damage reaches beyond those deported to employers, co-workers, families and the people who depend on immigrant labor every day.
For New York, the headline number is stark: up to 14% of the workforce at risk. Behind it sits a wider message from the Rockefeller Institute report — mass deportations would not stop with undocumented workers, but would move through jobs, prices, public revenue and the daily services that hold communities together.
