Bloomberg Surveillance · Friday, October 2, 2026
The impact of reduced immigration on the US labor market is difficult to assess due to measurement challenges and reporting lags. While some immigrant-intensive industries may see wage growth due to labor shortages, the overall effect is obscured by factors like data center construction boosting demand for workers.
“There have been, I think, first some measurement challenges, right, just in both the surveys and also with employers and reporting. And we've not just a reduction in immigration. We've had temporary visa status revoked, and that revoked some of the work status. And then how do employers handle that, and when does it get reported? So we have, with a pretty big time lag, got a sense of what's actually happening in terms of our immigrant workforce.”
“I think you can go to a few immigrant-intensive industries, like maybe in construction, and you see some wage growth pick up, which could be labor shortages. But, oh, yeah, we're also building a bunch of data centers. So, like, that's pushing up construction. So it's really hard to pull it out.”