U.S. Migration Could Be Negative in 2025. That Has Economic Consequences.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, along with other federal law enforcement officers, during an enforcement action in Chicago. (Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg)

Departures from the U.S. could exceed the number of people coming to live here this year for the first time in nearly seven decades, according to new research.

Total net migration to the U.S. could be a negative 525,000 this year. That is according to a new joint report published Wednesday by the center-right think tank American Enterprise Institute and the independent policy research group The Brookings Institution.

The researchers project that net total migration, including those entering and leaving, in 2025, will be between −525,000 and 115,000 this year. While that range includes the potential for small, positive net immigration flows, they believe zero or net-negative migration for the year is more likely.

“The range we have is about 600,000 people wide, but it’s very asymmetric, so the middle of the range, which is kind of what we think of as the sort of the mid-point estimate, is definitely negative,” Stan Veuger, co-author of the study and a senior fellow in economic policy studies at AEI, told Barron’s.

The U.S. hasn’t experienced net negative migration since before 1960, Veuger said. Wednesday’s report is the third in a series of joint net migration forecasts from AEI and Brookings examining the effects of changes in immigration policies.

The latest estimate represents a significant decline from the peak inflows of 3.5 million to 4 million people in 2023. That pullback is expected to have a damping effect on the overall U.S. economy, the researchers found. As a result, gross domestic product growth is expected to be 0.3 to 0.4 percentage points lower than otherwise expected for the year.

The effects on GDP may not seem enormous on the surface, Veuger said, but the impact is roughly the same order of magnitude over 10 years as the tax-and-spending package making its way through Congress currently. “I think, as a one year effect, that’s quite big,” he said.

The researchers found that monthly payroll growth could be near zero or even consistently negative over the next few years, due, in part, to deportations taking immigrants out of the workforce and fewer foreign-born workers entering the labor market. In fact, the so-called break-even point for the labor market—the monthly payroll growth needed to keep the unemployment rate stable—could be between 10,000 and 40,000 jobs a month in the second half of 2025. That compares with the break-even point of at least 140,000 in 2024.

The immigration cuts alone, however, likely aren’t enough to push monthly payroll growth to below zero this year or in 2026, Veuger said. He noted that there are also other factors affecting trends in the job market.

While Veuger expects lower net immigration to moderately impact employment and economic growth, he doesn’t expect the inflationary effects of having a smaller labor force to be a big deal. “I don’t think it’s a natural consequence to be super concerned about,” he said.

The projected decline in net immigration is due to pullbacks via both legal and illegal pathways. Border crossings have ground to a halt, but the researchers’ projections also incorporate lower issuances of green cards and temporary visas such as student and H-1B work authorizations. Additionally, the Trump administration has cut down on the formal refugee resettlement and humanitarian parole programs for countries like Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Ukraine, and Venezuela.

All told, the researchers expect 2.47 million to 2.76 million fewer people to migrate to the U.S. in 2025 than in 2024.

In addition to the restricted inflows of immigrants, there are also departures from the U.S. due to increased detentions, deportations, and voluntary exits. All told, Wednesday’s research report projects departures will be 675,000 to 1.02 million more than would normally be expected from typical patterns.

This year may not even represent the low point in net U.S. migration. Researchers point out that while there is more uncertainty around the 2026 projections, they expect enforcement activity will be heightened next year, leading to increased exits.

Yet because fewer people have been moving to the U.S. since mid-2024, there could be some downward pressure on the pool of migrants who might leave. As a result, the net migration projection for 2026 ranges from a loss of 735,000 to a gain of 507,000.

To be sure, the latest net migration projections from AEI and Brookings are quite a bit lower than many of the other forecasts from Wall Street. In early June, Goldman Sachs estimated that net immigration will stabilize at around 500,000 a year, a projection echoed by Oxford Economics last week. Morgan Stanley, however, reported that the Trump administration’s policies would reduce net immigration to 300,000 in 2025 and 200,000 in 2026.

While immigration authorities have stepped-up enforcement actions in recent months, there is still some uncertainty as to whether the U.S. will fulfill President Donald Trump’s pledge to deport “millions and millions” of unauthorized immigrants this year. Legal battles have also complicated the landscape.

But all of the forecasts agree: There will be fewer immigrants in the U.S. by the end of the year. The magnitude of the economic consequences of that policy remain to be seen.

Write to Megan Leonhardt at megan.leonhardt@barrons.com