Just to make “official,” what has happened to the American labor force over the past two years, the Department of Homeland Security reported at the end of May that “more than 3 million illegal aliens” had self-deported or been deported during the second term of President Donald Trump. The breakdown was given as follows in the New York Post on X: 2.2 million self-deported; 900,000 deported; and 900,000 arrests by the Department’s employees, all since Jan. 20, 2025.
Prior to Trump’s re-entering the White House, immigrants were estimated to add about 1.5 million people to the U.S. labor force each year, the great majority of whom became employed. Even allowing for some overlap of the three categories, the present condition of that labor force, with little hiring and little firing and no surge or mobilization capacity at all, leaps out of those figures—which do not even include departures from the labor force by retirement.
