Elderly Americans can expect to lose an average of $2,152 in annual social security benefits each, a projected 8.6% reduction in their retirement payments, by 2034 and every year after as a direct consequence of the economic fallout from the Trump administration’s anti-immigration campaign, if that carries on, according to a new report shared exclusively with the Guardian. Already, US food prices are up, housing permits to build new homes are down – and even native-born Americans are losing out on potential jobs after the sudden exodus of 1.2 million foreign-born workers over the last two years as a result of Donald Trump’s policies, the report finds. And we wanted to see what the data shows, and what other people have found the data shows,” said Michael Ettlinger, one of the report’s authors.
But the impacts of these policies, of these efforts, are going to be long-lasting. And I think that is by design,” Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the pro-immigration reform organization America’s Voice, told the Guardian. The report, Economic Impacts of Trump Administration Immigration Policy, was commissioned by America’s Voice and conducted by researchers at Economic Insights and Research Consulting, a firm focused on economic analysis.
Its conclusions underscore how recent federal policies revoking immigrants’ legal protections or targeting them for enforcement have had dire effects on the nation’s affordability crisis and job market, especially in regions and industries that rely disproportionately on foreign-born workers. In the US agricultural sector, where 42% of crop workers are undocumented and 68% are foreign-born, farmers across the country are warning that the vast majority or in some cases all of their workforce has disappeared overnight, leaving produce to fall to, or rot in, the ground and go to waste. Food products heavily reliant on immigrant labor have experienced much sharper price increases than food overall since Trump retook the White House, according to the report.
Examples of immigrant-reliant food price increases that have exceeded the average increase in grocery prices over the last 19 months, compared with the 19 months before Trump returned to office in January 2025, are: fresh whole milk up by 5.7%, canned vegetables up by 6.3%, and apples up by 7.2%, the report found. In that period before Trump’s inauguration, the vast majority of foods that principally depend on immigrant labor for production saw prices rise more slowly compared with other foods and some prices even fell outright, according to the report. Before, the trend for all those goods was a lower inflation rate.
And afterward, the trend was higher inflation. So the trend was reversed, and that was quite striking,” said Robert Lynch, one of the report’s authors. The construction industry, where foreign-born workers fill almost a third of all occupations, has also been severely affected.
States more dependent on immigrant labor have seen costs for new single-family homes soar 10.9% in 2026, compared with the first eight months of 2024, bringing building projects’ monetary value from an average of $305,752 to $338,752. And the issuance of housing permits to build single-family homes has dropped 10.6% nationwide since January 2025, with higher declines in regions more reliant on foreign-born workers, the research found. Meanwhile, native-born Americans are missing out on potential income in hard-hit states like California, Nevada, New Jersey, Florida and New York, where construction employment is on the decline – because when there are no immigrant roofers to build a home, American electricians and plumbers lose that project, too.
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