Illegal Immigrant Population Down an Estimated One Million Since January Offers Potential Labor Market Benefits

From the Center for Immigration Studies email list:

Washington, D.C. (June 19, 2025) – A new analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies finds that the number of illegal immigrants in the United States has declined by an estimated one million between January and May of this year. The overall foreign-born population – legal and illegal – also declined during this period, driven by a falloff in the number of non-citizens from Latin America who arrived in 1980 or later, a group that significantly overlaps with the illegal immigrant population. The decline may reflect departures in response to President Trump’s election and increased enforcement. However, the report’s findings come with important caveats.

“The departure of illegal immigrants is certainly good news for Americans, especially lower-skilled workers who will see higher wages,” said Steven Camarota, the Center’s Director of Research and lead author of the analysis. “It may also help draw some of the millions of American men without a college degree who are currently out of the labor force back into jobs.”

Among the findings:

• Published figures from the survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the number of foreign-born individuals in the labor force declined by 601,000 from January to May 2025.
• Our analysis of the raw data shows the total foreign-born population, both in and out of the labor force, declined 957,000 from January to May 2025. This is one of the largest declines over a 4-month period in the foreign-born in the last three decades.
• The decline was entirely among non-citizens. The number of naturalized U.S. citizens in the data did not fall from January to May of this year.
• In particular, non-citizens from Latin America who indicated they arrived in the United States in 1980 or later show a 1.07 million decrease from January to May of this year and a 1.45 million falloff since December of 2024.
• It is well established that the post-1980 Latin American non-citizen population overlaps significantly with the illegal immigrant population.
• Our preliminary estimate is that there are 14.8 million illegal immigrants in the country in May 2025, one million fewer than we estimated in January of this year.
• There are important caveats regarding these numbers: 1) Though the decline in non-citizens is statistically significant, the decline in the total foreign-born is not. 2) Given recent stepped-up enforcement efforts, it is possible that the decline was due, at least in part, to a greater reluctance by immigrants to participate in the survey or to identify as foreign-born rather than an actual falloff in their numbers. 3) Finally, some of the administrative data necessary to estimate illegal immigrants is not yet available, making our estimate for May only preliminary.