1.86 million immigrants left US in 2025? Why official data may mislead

Economists say falling survey participation among immigrants may be distorting official US immigration figures

The apparent fall of nearly 1.8 million in the US immigrant population this year may be far smaller than official survey figures suggest, with economists pointing to growing reluctance among immigrants to respond to government questionnaires amid tougher enforcement measures.

 

A new analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis says the widely cited decline captured by federal surveys is overstated, largely because fewer non-naturalised immigrants are taking part in government data collection.

 

Why the official numbers look misleading

 

The Current Population Survey (CPS), a key source of US labour and population data, shows a sharp drop in the foreign-born population in 2025. But St. Louis Fed researchers say the scale of that fall does not square with other economic indicators.

 

 

Using employment data, they estimate the immigrant population fell by between 123,000 and 627,000 through November. The CPS, by contrast, recorded a decline of 1.86 million people over the same period.

 

The CPS figures also imply a rise of 3.8 million in the native-born population, which the researchers described as implausible.

 

“This suggests that the major force for the large negative net immigration in the CPS is a drop in participation of non-naturalised immigrants who remain in the country but may be wary of participating in government data collection,” wrote Alexander Bick and Kevin Bloodworth II of the St. Louis Fed in a blog post published on Monday.

 

Falling survey participation among immigrants

 

Survey response rates declined across several groups between January and November 2025, but the drop was steeper among non-naturalised immigrants.

 

According to the analysis:

 

< Participation among non-naturalised immigrants fell by around 10 percentage points more than among native-born workers and naturalised citizens

< This decline coincided with the administration’s push to use IRS taxpayer data and insurance claims for immigration enforcement

 

“There is indeed a real decline in this group, both in terms of survey participation and in the weighted population estimates derived from the survey,” the researchers wrote. “The question is whether the decline in surveyed immigrants indeed means an actual drop in net immigration or simply fewer immigrants choosing to participate in the survey.”

 

What jobs data suggests instead

 

The researchers also looked at employment growth this year. Job creation through November appears to have fallen short of what would be needed to keep pace with growth in the native-born population alone.

 

That points to a shrinking immigrant workforce, but not on the scale suggested by the CPS.

 

The gap between employment data and survey estimates, they wrote, supports the view that the CPS is overstating the decline in immigration.

 

Why economists question the labour market logic

 

Concerns about the CPS data have been raised before. Earlier this year, Jed Kolko of the Peterson Institute for International Economics warned that taking the survey numbers at face value would lead to extreme conclusions about the labour market.

 

“The reported decline in the foreign-born population in the CPS—if true—would lead to absurd implications about the labor market,” Kolko wrote. He said a fall of more than 2 million immigrants since January would require either massive downward revisions to payroll employment or an unemployment rate of 2.6 percent, the lowest in more than seven decades.

 

“The numbers just don’t add up,” he wrote, adding that it could take years before official data clearly reflects current immigration trends.

 

What self-deportations and status losses show

 

At the same time, the Trump administration has been urging immigrants to leave the country voluntarily. Officials say about 1.9 million immigrants have “self-deported” since January 2025, alongside more than 600,000 formal deportations.

 

Together, the administration claims more than 2.5 million people have left the US this year. These figures, often linked to programmes offering stipends of between $1,000 and $3,000, have not been independently verified and blur the line between voluntary departures and enforcement pressure.

 

Since Inauguration Day on January 20, 2025, more than 1.5 million immigrants have either lost or are set to lose their temporary legal status, including work authorisation and protection from deportation.

 

Policy experts say this includes:

 

< Over 1 million people affected by the termination of Temporary Protected Status

< Around 500,000 people losing Humanitarian Parole protections

 

“I don’t think we’ve ever, as a country, seen such a huge number of people losing their immigration status all at once,” said Julia Gelatt, associate director of the US Immigration Policy Program at the Migration Policy Institute.

 

“Seeing well over 1 million people lose their work authorization in a single year is a really huge event that has ripple effects for employers and communities and families and our economy as well,” Gelatt said.