The early economic returns on President Trump’s immigration enforcement are unambiguous: American workers are winning. After decades of being told that mass immigration was an economic necessity, the data from Trump’s first eight months in office tell a different story—one where reducing foreign worker competition translates directly into higher wages and improved living standards for native-born Americans. The numbers are stark and revealing. The foreign-born workforce has contracted by nearly one million workers since January, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday.
What happened when that foreign worker flood was turned off? Exactly what basic economic theory predicts: wages rose, and rose meaningfully. Average hourly earnings have jumped 1.8 percent from January to August, an annualized growth rate of 3.1 percent. But the real story lies with production and non-supervisory workers—the 80 percent of the workforce most likely to compete directly with foreign-born labor. Their wages have risen 2.0 percent over seven months, annualizing to 3.4 percent growth.
These aren’t just nominal gains being eaten away by inflation. With consumer prices rising only 1.2 percent over the same period, American workers have seen genuine purchasing power increases. Production workers alone have gained nearly 0.8 percentage points in real wage growth—meaning their paychecks buy more goods and services than they did at the start of the year.