US immigrant population posts first decline in decades

About a month ago, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem held a press conference to announce that about “1.6 million illegal immigrants have left the United States population.”

That’s a fraction of the number of people who arrived in the years that the Biden administration essentially opened the border. But it’s a lot of people, and it engendered much eye-rolling among journalists who compared Noem’s claim to Attorney General Pam Bondi’s declaration that President Trump’s drug interdiction policies had saved 258 million lives, roughly 75% of the U.S. total population.

The foreign-born population in the US declined from 53.3 million at the beginning of the year to 51.9 million by the end of June — a decline of 1.4 million in just six months.

However, in the weeks since Noem’s announcement, several data points have since emerged that suggest her estimate may be reasonably accurate. It might even be too low.

Numbers don’t lie

In August, the Pew Research Center estimated that the U.S. foreign-born population dropped from 53.3 million at the beginning of the year to 51.9 million by the end of June — a decline of 1.4 million in just six months. The Pew report noted that the January count of 53.3 million was “the largest number ever recorded” and that the decline this year will be the first decline in the immigrant population since the 1960s.

About the same time, the Center for Immigration Studies estimated that the foreign-born population fell by 2.2 million in the first seven months of the year. The center estimates that 1.6 million of those who left were in the country illegally. If this estimate is correct, it would indicate that about 600,000 immigrants left, despite having the option legally to stay.

The center’s report indicates that it relied in part on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tracks the number of foreign-born workers. The bureau’s data shows that the number of foreign-born workers peaked in March at 32.2 million, before falling to 30.8 million by August — a decline of 1.4 million. Even so, the level remains historically high, and numbers appeared to stabilize in late summer.

Last week, the Congressional Budget Office updated its demographic projections, based on changes in immigration patterns and enforcement since the beginning of the year. It lowered its projection for the population in 2055 from 372 million to 367 million. The current population is about 350 million, so their projection suggests that the U.S. will add only 17 million new residents over the next 30 years. That will be the slowest population growth in the country’s history.

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Photo by filo via Getty Images

The Congressional Budget Office also projects that natural population growth (births minus deaths) will turn negative in 2031. At that point, any population growth will be almost entirely dependent on incoming immigrants. (Longer life spans play a minor role in such projections.) The office’s numbers still assume growth from immigration this year and in subsequent years. That certainly seems unlikely, at least for this year, given all the preliminary data showing that many immigrants have already left the country.

If the U.S. population declines this year, it will be only the second time in the nation’s history. The only other time was in 2021, at the height of the COVID pandemic.

Uncharted territory

There will be those who decry a lower population trajectory as a calamity and others who celebrate it as a blessing. But the truth is that we are in uncharted territory. Classical economic theory holds that the change in economic activity is the sum of the changes in population and productivity, implying that a population decline will lead to economic contraction.

However, many argue that there are conditions today that distort the classical theory. These include the negative impacts of a dysfunctional immigration system, declines in the proclivity of immigrants to assimilate, and a potential massive increase in productivity driven by technology, especially AI.

In other words, all these opinions about the advantages or disadvantages of slower population growth, or perhaps even a population that is declining, are nothing but speculation at this point. For 250 years, companies, institutions, governments, policymakers, and investors have been basing decisions on the assumption that our population will continue to grow each year. At a minimum, this new trajectory will require a major reset of those long-standing assumptions.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.