iStock/Bruce Peter Morin
Editor's Note: The views expressed in this column are solely those of the author.
Manufacturing has faced a decades-long skilled worker shortage that has worsened every year. A survey by Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute projects the U.S. will need 3.8 million manufacturing jobs to be filled between 2024 and 2033, and 1.9 million jobs will go unfilled. The Deloitte estimate is based on factors such as job openings, retirements, industry growth, and the creation of new jobs through investment.
Manufacturing Depends on Foreign-Born Workers
According to the Manufacturing Alliance, in 2024, the share of foreign-born workers in manufacturing was 19.2% for durable goods and 22.3% for nondurable goods, representing a significant portion of their workforce and increasing over time. The proportion of foreign-born workers in manufacturing has been growing, rising from 18.5% to 19.2% in durable goods and from 21.8% to 22.3% in nondurable goods from 2023 to 2024 alone. This indicates that manufacturers depend heavily on immigration, particularly for filling a large number of entry-level positions. The fact is, U.S. manufacturing’s future is deeply interwoven with immigration.
The Trump Administration’s policy, however, is against immigration. The new government policy is for mass deportations and to terminate the legal status of hundreds of thousands of migrants. According to the Economic Policy Institute, the administration’s goal is to deport 4 million workers in four years.
Trump’s immigration strategy is rooted in political rhetoric and policy, rather than any documented personal experience. His anti-immigrant and nationalist messaging have been a consistent aspect of his political career, serving to galvanize his base and frame immigrants as criminals and a security and economic threat.
The policies are shaped by concerns about immigration. While it is often argued that immigrants compete for jobs, lower wages for U.S. citizens, and strain public resources, most academic economic research does not substantiate these claims.
According to the Joint Congressional Economic Committee, mass deportations would:
- Reduce real gross domestic product (GDP) by as much as 7.4% by 2028.
- Reduce the supply of workers in key industries, including up to 225,000 in agriculture and 1.5 million in construction.
- Push prices up to 9.1% higher by 2028.
- Cost 44,000 U.S.-born workers their jobs for every half-million immigrants removed from the labor force, meaning the removal of one group disrupts entire production processes and supply chains, leading to a loss of jobs for the other. For example, if a construction crew loses its immigrant laborers, the U.S.-born site managers may also lose their jobs because the projects cannot continue.
Confronting Harsh Realities in the U.S. Workforce
The reality is that there are not enough workers in the U.S. workforce because of:
- Aging workforce: The U.S. workforce is aging, and as more workers retire, fewer people remain to replace them.
- Declining birth rates: Birth rates are declining both globally and in the U.S., where the total fertility rate reached a new all-time low of 1.599 in 2024, well below the replacement rate of 2.1.
- Declining Labor Force Participation Rates (LFPR): The LFPR peaked at 67.3% in early 2000 and has fallen by several percentage points since then, hovering around 62.3% in August 2025. This long-term decline is mainly due to structural changes, such as population aging, higher rates of school and college enrollment among young people (ages 16-24), and demographic shifts.
The U.S.-born labor force will continue to shrink over the next decade due to an aging population and declining birth rates, leading to a shrinking pool of native-born workers. Immigration has been filling the gap, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other outlets. Immigrants are projected to be the sole source of U.S. labor force growth, making them essential for filling jobs as the native-born workforce shrinks.
The Inconvenient Truth
Manufacturing will not have enough workers without immigration, as it faces significant labor shortages that will be exacerbated by reduced immigration. Manufacturing industries are already struggling to fill a large number of vacancies. The Bureau of Labor Statistics Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) showed that there were 438,000 unfilled manufacturing jobs in July 2025. The inescapable conclusion is that immigration policy is not just about social or political problems; it is directly tied to industrial capacity.
Why manufacturers rely on immigrant workers:
- The manufacturing sector has struggled to attract enough domestic workers to fill open positions, and according to the Quarterly Survey of Plant Capacity Utilization (QSPC), collected by the U.S. Census Bureau in 2024, nearly 21% of manufacturers reported they could not operate at full capacity due to labor and skills constraints.
- Manufacturers suffer from high turnover, and studies show that immigrant workers, particularly those brought in through resettlement programs, have higher retention rates than native-born workers.
- Immigrants are not only filling entry-level jobs but are also taking on high-skilled roles that require advanced education. For example, immigrant workers accounted for 16.4% of the STEM workforce in the Great Lakes region in 2022, helping meet demand in industries such as advanced manufacturing and pharmaceuticals.
Certain subsectors of manufacturing are particularly reliant on immigrant labor:
- Food manufacturing has the highest percentage of foreign-born workers, making their contributions essential to sustaining production.
- Transportation equipment has seen a steady increase in the number of immigrant workers to meet demand for assembly and precision manufacturing.
- Electronics and machinery manufacturing increasingly rely on foreign-born workers with specialized technical skills to keep up with advances in AI and automation.
What seems to be lost in the debate over immigration and deportation is that immigrants are crucial to expanding the labor force and boosting economic output. Immigrants have helped expand the labor supply, pay nearly $580 billion in taxes, and have a spending power of $1.6 trillion a year. Congress needs to reform and modernize the immigration system while also cementing the immense economic benefits associated with immigration, but so far, comprehensive immigration reform has been blocked.
Manufacturers depend heavily on immigration, particularly for filling a large number of entry-level positions. Manufacturing will not have enough workers without immigration, as it faces significant labor shortages that will be exacerbated by reduced immigration. The fact is, U.S. manufacturing’s future is deeply interwoven with immigration.
I am a big supporter of President Trump’s America First policies and reshoring manufacturing jobs, but I think the administration is shooting itself in its proverbial foot with its current anti-immigration policies. If he wants to succeed with reshoring and growing domestic manufacturing, he needs to realign his policies with reality, not ideology.
In 2006, I was doing a workshop for small manufacturers (mostly job shops) at McCormick Place in Chicago. At the end of the workshop, the subject of illegal immigrants came up. Most of these companies had hired immigrant workers and found them hardworking, trainable, and more dependable than native born workers. I asked them how many of them would support deporting illegal immigrants—not one person raised their hand. Perhaps it was a sign of the future.
Michael Collins is the author of a new book, "The Globalization Trap," which will debut in 2026. He can be reached at [email protected] or on mpcmgt.net.
