New brief identifies fast-growing jobs reliant on undocumented workers
    New brief identifies fast-growing jobs reliant on undocumented workers
    News

    New brief identifies fast-growing jobs reliant on undocumented workers

    28 August 2025

    CMS warns that mass deportations undermine America’s ability to meet growing workforce needs

    ​FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

    New York, NY - The Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMS) has released a new research brief identifying high-growth jobs that currently rely on undocumented workers and warning of workforce shortages under mass deportation policies. The brief also outlines the broader role that undocumented workers play in critical industries like construction, science and technology, manufacturing, transportation, and healthcare and social assistance.  
     The Trump administration’s mass deportation plans to remove undocumented workers[1] with key roles in fast-growing occupational sectors put America’s ability to fill its growing workforce demand at risk. 14 jobs deemed to be growing “much faster than average” currently rely on undocumented workers[2], including:
    • Electrical engineers, industrial engineers, electricians, software developers[3], software quality assurance analysts & testers, home health & personal care aides, medical and data scientists, cooks, and taxi drivers[4].
    • Six of the 14 high-growth jobs (43 percent) reliant on undocumented workers have university degree requirements.
    • Five jobs (Data scientists, electrical engineers, medical scientists, software developers, and software quality assurance analysts & testers) report median salaries over $100,000.
    Undocumented workers are critical to sustaining these occupations, and they also supercharge broader economic growth by filling roles vital to industry-wide ecosystems. The seven industries connected to high-growth jobs that employ significant numbers of undocumented workers and are vulnerable to disruption under mass deportation policies are: 
    • Construction (employing 1,729,000 undocumented workers), Accommodation & Food Services (1,031,800), Manufacturing (909,700), Other Services (542,900), Healthcare & Social Assistance (495,100), Professional, Scientific, & Technical Services (488,300), and Transportation & Warehousing (471,000).[5]
    CMS’s overview of undocumented immigrants in the workforce also reports that:
    • The U.S. workforce includes 8.5 million undocumented workers.[6]
    • Undocumented workers are overwhelmingly in their prime working years (79 percent are aged 25-54).
    • Undocumented workers contribute an estimated $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes.[7]
    • Over half (52 percent) of undocumented workers have been in the country for at least 10 years, with over one-quarter residing in the country for over 20 years (28 percent).
    The report’s author, CMS Senior Research and Policy Analyst Matthew Lisiecki, said: “The undocumented workforce has sustained and driven growth across important industries for decades, and so the destabilizing effects of mass deportation at scale on economic growth would be staggering. The Trump administration’s current policies risk creating significant workforce shortages in key occupations and will remove talented, hard-working individuals from their families, communities, and the national economy.
    “In addition, this data shows that undocumented workers play important roles in occupations across a range of industries, salaries, and educational requirements. Our economy relies on adding conscientious, knowledgeable, and diligent workers in all of these roles, and the likelihood that employers will be able to instantly fill mass workforce vacancies left by immigrants without at least serious financial and operational disruption is naively low.”
    CMS Executive Director, Mario Russell, said: “Immigrants are suffering now under mass deportation policies, but all Americans will suffer in the long run when our nation’s economic strengths are undermined by an overreaching, indiscriminate, and cruel immigration enforcement agenda. Already, the administration’s back-and-forth about deporting agricultural workers points to an undeniable fact– American industries cannot sustain this brutal and rapid pace of deportations without suffering serious workforce and economic disruptions. 
    “The US will self-inflict harm by continuing this policy of mass deportation: Whether by undercutting its global leadership in the science and technology industry by putting almost half a million (471,000) undocumented immigrants working in the sector at risk of deportation, to impairing our country’s ability to build affordable homes for American families, given 1,729,000 undocumented immigrants work in construction, to exacerbating the demographic challenge of sustaining a healthcare workforce large enough to care for our older loved ones by threatening to deport half a million (495,100) workers in the healthcare & social assistance industry.
    “The younger skew of the immigrant worker population,[8] as well as their willingness to work in so many vital jobs and industries, provides a key part of the solution to so many of America’s biggest problems. And beyond their professional contributions, undocumented workers also pay an estimated $96.7 billion in federal, state, and local taxes, and have deep roots in their communities. Rather than mass deportation, the nation needs bipartisan, common-sense immigration reforms that prioritize the nation’s economic stability and growth, in addition to respecting the dignity and right to due process of migrants.”
    View the pdf of the full brief directly here or on our website. For more information, contact Rosalie Wells at rwells@cmsny.org or 347-407-5137. 

    Context & Methodology
    The second Trump administration has turned its executive powers to the expulsion of migrants who reside in the country without authorization or have short-term relief from immigration enforcement through programs including Temporary Protected Status, humanitarian parole, deferred action (including DACA), or a pending asylum claim. We define these status categories as “liminal.” In light of this precarity, CMS includes immigrants with liminal status in its annual estimates of the undocumented population, which grew to 12.2 million in 2023 (the latest year with available data). Using these estimates, CMS identifies the 8.5 million undocumented workers contributing to the nation’s economy. We define workers as those age 16 and older who are in the labor force–that is, are either employed or unemployed and actively seeking employment. More information on the estimates can be found in: Warren, R. (2025). The Undocumented Population in the United States Increased to 12.2 Million in 2023. Journal on Migration and Human Security. https://doi.org/10.1177/2331502425133079

    CMS estimates are based on the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey (ACS), using the microdata file prepared and provided by IPUMS USA. Additional occupational data, including projections of occupational growth over the coming years, come from the Occupational Outlook Handbook prepared by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. One note on terminology: in the ACS, Industry refers to the setting in which work is conducted, as well as the economic context of that work. Occupation is used to identify a worker’s specific tasks and professional functions. More information can be found on context and methodology in the full report.

     [1] Defined as undocumented immigrants age 16 and up who are either employed or unemployed and actively seeking employment. 

     [2] This briefing combines data from the ACS and BLS in order to identify occupations classified as growing “much faster than average” with a projected growth of at least 10,000 new jobs and a current workforce of at least 100,000 workers that is at least 5 percent undocumented.

     [3] The count of software developers does not include nonimmigrants on temporary worker visas such as the H-1B program.

    [4] The full list of 14 occupations can be found in the full report. 

     [5] More information about the seven industries’ undocumented workforce can be found in the report here. 

     [6] CMS estimates based on the 2023 American Community Survey, discussed in the Context & Methodology section below. More information on the estimates can be found in: Warren, R. (2025). The Undocumented Population in the United States Increased to 12.2 Million in 2023. Journal on Migration and Human Security. https://doi.org/10.1177/2331502425133079

    [7]Davis, C., Guzman, M., & Sifre, E. (2024). Tax Payments by Undocumented Immigrants. Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. https://sfo2.digitaloceanspaces.com/itep/ITEP-Tax-Payments-by-Undocumented-Immigrants-2024.pdf

     [8] 79% of whom are prime-age workers between 25-54 years of age.

    The Center for Migration Studies (CMS) is a New York-based educational institute devoted to the study of international migration, to the promotion of understanding between immigrants and receiving communities, and to public policies that safeguard the dignity and rights of migrants, refugees, and newcomers. For more information, please visit www.cmsny.org.

    307 East 60th Street, Fourth Floor, New York, NY 10022 • P: 212.337.3080 • cms@cmsny.org • www.cmsny.org

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