About that July Bureau of Labor Statistics Jobs Data . . .

President Trump has assailed the latest jobs data for July from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), going so far as to fire BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer on August 1. He may want to review the analysis of that BLS data compiled by the research division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED), which suggests his immigration crackdown is working. According to FRED, the foreign-born population in the United States has fallen by 1.937 million since March, when the immigration-enforcement efforts of his “Border Czar”, Tom Homan, found their groove.

Homer and FRED

As the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank explains:

FRED is a descendent of the data publications created by Homer Jones, who was the research director of the St. Louis Fed from 1958 to 1971. Jones was a proponent of making economic data widely available, allowing policymakers and members of the public alike to judge for themselves the state of the economy and the outcome of policy.

…

FRED got its start in 1991 as a free electronic bulletin board (a precursor to the Internet) and offered “free up-to-the-minute economic data via modems connected to personal computers,” providing data from the [weekly U.S. Financial Data, “USFD’].

…

What began as a simple, printed data publication has grown into a sophisticated and successful vehicle for sharing important economic data with anyone around the world.

And how. As I can attest, even the least technologically competent among us can easily access FRED’s data, and as a bonus, its website follows your searches and suggests other helpful data.

“Native-Born” and “Foreign-Born”

Among other distinctions, the FRED data can be broken down to differentiate between the population and employment rates of the “native-born” and “foreign-born” in the United States.

Note, however, that FRED is not “sophisticated” enough to distinguish between the “legal” foreign-born population (naturalized citizens, green card holders, nonimmigrant students, and workers in status, etc.) and the “illegal” foreign-born (nonimmigrant visa overstays, “improper entrants”, parolees out of status, and so on).

For estimates of those populations, you can rely on the work of my colleagues, CIS Director of Research Steve Camarota, Karen Zeigler, and Jason Richwine.

But given there’s little reason for lawful foreign-born immigrants and citizens to depart the United States, it can safely be assumed that the FRED data provides a rough snapshot of the inflows and outflows of the unauthorized foreign-born.

The Native-Born and the Unemployment Rate

FRED looked at the BLS data for July and determined that the native-born unemployment rate last month was 4.7 percent, up from 4.4 percent in June. That’s not good.

What is good from an economic standpoint, however, is that FRED’s analysis of the BLS data also shows that the employment level of the native-born population rose between June (132.652 million) and July (133.035 million) — an increase of 383,000, not seasonally adjusted.

I’ll leave it to Camarota, et al. to explain how both the unemployment rate for the native-born and the number of native-born workers both managed to increase in a one-month period, but my guess is that the number of U.S.-born workers looking for jobs went up last month, and while some were successful, others weren’t.

The Foreign-Born and their Unemployment Rate

Which brings me to FRED’s analysis of the BLS data on the foreign born.

It reveals that the foreign-born population in the United States dropped, month-over-month, from 49.135 million in June to 48.510 million in July — a decline of 625,000 in 31 days — but, more saliently, fell by 1.937 million since March, when the FRED analysis showed there were 50.477 million foreign-born individuals in this country.

While it’s possible that more than 20,000 foreign-born individuals either died or departed each day during an unseasonably warm mid-summer month, that reported decline suggests Trump may be onto something when it comes to the inexactitude of the BLS data.

Still, even assuming the BLS data isn’t perfect, the foreign-born population has plainly plummeted since Trump returned and began cracking down on unauthorized aliens in this country.

If you want more proof, look at the FRED analysis of the latest BLS data on the foreign-born employment level.

It shows there were 30.764 million foreign-born workers in our economy — 467,000 fewer than in June (31.231 million), and a decline of 1.461 million since March (when FRED reports there were 32.225 million foreign-born workers in the United States).

If you assume most aliens come here to “work hard and contribute to our nation”, or to put it differently, for “economic reasons” (basically the same point), if hundreds of thousands of them stop working, they either left, aged out of the work force, or died — mostly the former.

Note that the foreign-born employment level as reported by FRED increased by nearly five million workers under the Biden administration — from 25.862 million in February 2021 (President Biden’s first full month in office) to 30.729 million (Biden’s last full month in office) — and see that the foreign-born workforce in this country roughly correlated with the millions of illegal migrants that the White House and DHS were ushering into the country during that period.

You can follow that surge through the rise in the foreign-born population level as reported by FRED during the Biden years as well: 43.086 million in January 2021 when Trump left office the first time to 50.442 million in January 2025 when Biden departed, a net increase of 7.356 million (roughly the population of Tennessee).

A Rough Comparison to Assess the Increase in the Illegal Population

Not all came illegally, of course, but to get an idea of what percentage did, compare the four years of Biden to the four years of the first Trump administration, when the foreign-born population level as reported by FRED rose from 41.379 million in January 2017 to 43.086 million in January 2021 (a more modest increase of 1.707 million, or nearly 427,000 per annum on average).

Maybe the Covid pandemic dampened immigration, you might think.

Okay, then look at the increase during the entirety of the Obama administration: from 35.007 million foreign-born individuals in the United States in January 2009 to (as noted) 41.379 million in January 2017.

That comes out to an increase in the foreign-born population of 6.372 million in eight years, or less than 800,000 per annum. Biden’s annual average increase in the foreign-born population was 1.84 million, more than double the rate under his old boss.

Undoubtedly Covid played a role in lowering the number of foreign nationals coming to the United States at the end of the first Trump administration, but the pandemic lingered long into the Biden years (Title 42 didn’t end until May 2023) and didn’t do much to slow the rate at which foreign-born people were coming, both legally and otherwise (more the latter).

Now that the permissive, non-enforcement immigration policies of Joe Biden and his impeached DHS Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, have ended, so apparently have the incentives that drew aliens to come illegally and stay unlawfully.

Couple that with the deterrents to unlawful presence Trump and Homan have implemented (securing of the border and a heightened threat of arrest, detention, and deportation for those here illegally) and the BLS and FRED datasets on the decline in the foreign-born population in the United States make sense — and show the current administration’s immigration-enforcement policies are working.

I’ll leave it to Camarota and his mathematically adept CIS crew to provide a more precise read on the decline in the illegal alien population since Trump returned, but a “sophisticated and successful vehicle” says the foreign-born population has dropped by nearly two million since March — and its name is FRED.