The U.S. economy lost 23,000 jobs in July, according to the latest federal jobs report, and the way it happened is what has economists worried. The unemployment rate did not rise, as it normally would when jobs disappear. It fell. The reason, analysts say, is that the workforce itself shrank: as the government removes hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers from the country, their jobs are not being filled by others. They are vanishing along with them.
Writing in Fortune, economists described this as an emerging “deportation economy.” As the administration purges workers, Americans are not simply taking their place; instead, the jobs appear to be disappearing with them. The timing is not incidental. Roughly 200,000 immigrants’ Temporary Protected Status was terminated at the end of July, a group that includes Haitian workers whose protection ended July 27.
The July figure is one month in a longer trend. Analysts across several firms have tracked a steady contraction of the immigrant labor force as enforcement has intensified.
According to Capital Economics, the number of people detained by ICE climbed from an average of about 15,000 a month in 2024 to nearly 40,000 in early June, while deportations rose from an annualized rate of roughly 400,000 to about 600,000. The firm found that the foreign-born labor force has contracted by more than 1 million people over the past 4 months.
Crucially, the jobs those workers held are not being backfilled by U.S.-born workers.
An analysis of payroll data across hundreds of American cities, cited in a recent report by the group America’s Voice, estimated that enforcement caused roughly 668,000 job losses, of which between 51,000 and 297,000 were workers born in the United States. The National Foundation for American Policy found that the unemployment rate for U.S.-born workers rose from 4.3 percent in January 2025 to 4.7 percent in January 2026, the opposite of what the policy’s supporters predicted.
The reason, economists say, is that immigrant and U.S.-born jobs are often linked rather than interchangeable. As the Economic Policy Institute put it in its own analysis, because the two groups’ jobs are frequently complementary, a shrinking supply of immigrant labor reduces employers’ demand for jobs held by both groups. When a construction crew or a restaurant loses enough workers, some employers cut hours or shut down entirely — costing everyone their jobs. That same EPI report projected that large-scale deportations could cost roughly 6 million jobs, with construction and child care among the hardest-hit sectors.
The workers whose losses are dragging down the job market include tens of thousands of Haitians, whose economic footprint was substantial before their status was terminated.
According to the immigration policy group FWD.us, Haitian TPS holders contribute an estimated $5.9 billion to the U.S. economy each year and pay $805 million in federal and payroll taxes and $755 million in state and local taxes. CNN Business, reporting the same figures, noted that nearly 190,000 Haitian TPS holders were employed in early 2025 across retail, hospitality, health care, and other industries.
Those workers are concentrated in the states now absorbing the loss. FWD.us counted about 330,000 Haitian TPS holders nationwide, roughly 158,000 in Florida, 40,000 in New York, and 45,000 in Massachusetts. In Ohio alone, the Haitian Times reported, TPS holders contribute about $160 million to the state’s economy each year.
And the loss reaches into households. FWD.us found that 50,000 U.S. citizen children depend on their Haitian TPS parents’ income, and that 25,000 of them would be pushed into poverty without it.
As the workforce shrinks, the second effect is on prices — the cost of the goods and services those vanished workers used to produce.
A University of Pennsylvania Wharton School study, cited in the America’s Voice report, found that after immigration enforcement hits a metropolitan area, consumer spending falls about 6.2 percent below normal and foot traffic drops about 2.7 percent at the average business, amounting to as much as $14 billion in lost spending in a single year.
The increases are steepest in the industries most dependent on immigrant labor. With about 68 percent of the farmworkers who harvest American food being foreign-born, staples have risen well above the 2.6 percent core inflation rate, apples up 7.1 percent, fresh citrus up 6.3 percent, and fresh whole milk up 9.0 percent. In housing, where nearly 29 percent of construction workers are immigrants, the America’s Voice report found that in the Northeast, single-family home permits fell 23.5 percent between March 2025 and June 2026 while new home prices rose 15.4 percent. In home health care, where about 40 percent of workers are immigrants, costs rose 10.7 percent over the past year.
Looking ahead, FWD.us projected that current immigration policies will cost the average American family an additional $2,150 a year for goods and services by the end of 2028.
The pattern the data describe is a single one, running in one direction. Removing workers does not free up their jobs — it eliminates them, for immigrants and U.S.-born workers alike, and drives up the cost of what those workers produced. The 23,000 jobs lost in July are, by this reading, not a blip but a preview.
For CTN’s audience, the point is both specific and general. Haitian workers were contributing nearly $6 billion a year and staffing the hospitals, construction sites, and restaurants their communities and neighbors depend on. Subtracting them does not leave the economy unchanged. It leaves it smaller and more expensive for everyone who remains.
https://ctninfo.com/23000-jobs-lost-…portation-policy/
https://www.facebook.com/CaribbeanNewsMedia
Editorial Disclaimer: This article was originally written in English. Other language versions are produced using AI translation software, and errors are possible; the English version is authoritative. CTN also uses AI to convert text into audio.
