(What’s Left of) Our Economy: More Evidence that Illegal Aliens are Suppressing U.S. Wages
Who's accountable for the results?
Eleven data months into the second Trump administration (whose first full month was last February), the evidence has just gotten stronger that illegal aliens have been kneecapping the wages of legal U.S. workers.
The evidence comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) latest data on inflation-adjusted hourly wages (for January), released last Friday.
The headline figures for the report are noteworthy enough. They showed that, so far during Trump 2.0, real hourly pay for all private sector workers (numbers for government workers aren’t collected because they largely reflect politicians’ decisions, not economic fundamentals) rose by 1.25 percent. That was just a shade slower than the 1.26 percent recorded during the final eleven months of the Open Borders-friendly Biden administration.
For lower-paid production and nonsupervisory workers (also known as blue-collar workers), after-inflation wages during the second Trump administration have advanced by a faster 1.42 percent. That’s better than the 1.34 percent price-adjusted hourly raise they received during the comparable 2024-2025 period.
But the illegal aliens’ effect becomes clear upon examining real wage trends for sectors of the economy whose workforces are especially illegal alien-heavy. As reported last month in RealityChek, they number 23, according to the Migration Policy Institute, which is supportive of more immigration. And that post revealed that, as of the December U.S. jobs report’s release, 16 of them saw stronger real wage performances between February and December of that year, when Trump’s border security crackdown and deportations began, than they did between the pre-crackdown and deportation months of February and December, 2024.
Real wages were unchanged in one sector (janitorial services) and their record was stronger during the Biden 2024 months in the remaining six.
As of the new jobs report, 16 illegal aliens-heavy sectors also saw better real wages performance during the February, 2025-January, 2026 period than during the pre-crackdown February, 2024-January, 2025 span (though there was some shifting within this group), and seven experienced worse performance, rather than the six revealed by the December data. .
Yet that slight Biden era improvement pales next to developments among the 16 categories where wages performed better during the 2025-2026 stretch.
That’s because of those 16, as of the latest BLS data, in 14, the gap between the two periods widened. That is, real wages rose even faster under Trump 2.0 than during the last comparable Biden stretch in than was first reported. In none did the gap narrow.
As of January (and December), of those seven in which 2025-2026 wage performance was weaker than in pre-deportations 2024-25, in three the gap between the two periods narrowed. That is, where real wages in 2025-26 lagged the 2024-2025 results, in three instances they caught up to some extent. In three other of those cases, the gap between the 2024-2025 and the superior 2025-2026 widened. That is, their lag became greater.
Here are the specific statistics for the five very broad jobs categories out of the 23 for which data are …
Who's accountable for the results?
Eleven data months into the second Trump administration (whose first full month was last February), the evidence has just gotten stronger that illegal aliens have been kneecapping the wages of legal U.S. workers.
The evidence comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) latest data on inflation-adjusted hourly wages (for January), released last Friday.
The headline figures for the report are noteworthy enough. They showed that, so far during Trump 2.0, real hourly pay for all private sector workers (numbers for government workers aren’t collected because they largely reflect politicians’ decisions, not economic fundamentals) rose by 1.25 percent. That was just a shade slower than the 1.26 percent recorded during the final eleven months of the Open Borders-friendly Biden administration.
For lower-paid production and nonsupervisory workers (also known as blue-collar workers), after-inflation wages during the second Trump administration have advanced by a faster 1.42 percent. That’s better than the 1.34 percent price-adjusted hourly raise they received during the comparable 2024-2025 period.
But the illegal aliens’ effect becomes clear upon examining real wage trends for sectors of the economy whose workforces are especially illegal alien-heavy. As reported last month in RealityChek, they number 23, according to the Migration Policy Institute, which is supportive of more immigration. And that post revealed that, as of the December U.S. jobs report’s release, 16 of them saw stronger real wage performances between February and December of that year, when Trump’s border security crackdown and deportations began, than they did between the pre-crackdown and deportation months of February and December, 2024.
Real wages were unchanged in one sector (janitorial services) and their record was stronger during the Biden 2024 months in the remaining six.
As of the new jobs report, 16 illegal aliens-heavy sectors also saw better real wages performance during the February, 2025-January, 2026 period than during the pre-crackdown February, 2024-January, 2025 span (though there was some shifting within this group), and seven experienced worse performance, rather than the six revealed by the December data. .
Yet that slight Biden era improvement pales next to developments among the 16 categories where wages performed better during the 2025-2026 stretch.
That’s because of those 16, as of the latest BLS data, in 14, the gap between the two periods widened. That is, real wages rose even faster under Trump 2.0 than during the last comparable Biden stretch in than was first reported. In none did the gap narrow.
As of January (and December), of those seven in which 2025-2026 wage performance was weaker than in pre-deportations 2024-25, in three the gap between the two periods narrowed. That is, where real wages in 2025-26 lagged the 2024-2025 results, in three instances they caught up to some extent. In three other of those cases, the gap between the 2024-2025 and the superior 2025-2026 widened. That is, their lag became greater.
Here are the specific statistics for the five very broad jobs categories out of the 23 for which data are …
(What’s Left of) Our Economy: More Evidence that Illegal Aliens are Suppressing U.S. Wages
Who's accountable for the results?
Eleven data months into the second Trump administration (whose first full month was last February), the evidence has just gotten stronger that illegal aliens have been kneecapping the wages of legal U.S. workers.
The evidence comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) latest data on inflation-adjusted hourly wages (for January), released last Friday.
The headline figures for the report are noteworthy enough. They showed that, so far during Trump 2.0, real hourly pay for all private sector workers (numbers for government workers aren’t collected because they largely reflect politicians’ decisions, not economic fundamentals) rose by 1.25 percent. That was just a shade slower than the 1.26 percent recorded during the final eleven months of the Open Borders-friendly Biden administration.
For lower-paid production and nonsupervisory workers (also known as blue-collar workers), after-inflation wages during the second Trump administration have advanced by a faster 1.42 percent. That’s better than the 1.34 percent price-adjusted hourly raise they received during the comparable 2024-2025 period.
But the illegal aliens’ effect becomes clear upon examining real wage trends for sectors of the economy whose workforces are especially illegal alien-heavy. As reported last month in RealityChek, they number 23, according to the Migration Policy Institute, which is supportive of more immigration. And that post revealed that, as of the December U.S. jobs report’s release, 16 of them saw stronger real wage performances between February and December of that year, when Trump’s border security crackdown and deportations began, than they did between the pre-crackdown and deportation months of February and December, 2024.
Real wages were unchanged in one sector (janitorial services) and their record was stronger during the Biden 2024 months in the remaining six.
As of the new jobs report, 16 illegal aliens-heavy sectors also saw better real wages performance during the February, 2025-January, 2026 period than during the pre-crackdown February, 2024-January, 2025 span (though there was some shifting within this group), and seven experienced worse performance, rather than the six revealed by the December data. .
Yet that slight Biden era improvement pales next to developments among the 16 categories where wages performed better during the 2025-2026 stretch.
That’s because of those 16, as of the latest BLS data, in 14, the gap between the two periods widened. That is, real wages rose even faster under Trump 2.0 than during the last comparable Biden stretch in than was first reported. In none did the gap narrow.
As of January (and December), of those seven in which 2025-2026 wage performance was weaker than in pre-deportations 2024-25, in three the gap between the two periods narrowed. That is, where real wages in 2025-26 lagged the 2024-2025 results, in three instances they caught up to some extent. In three other of those cases, the gap between the 2024-2025 and the superior 2025-2026 widened. That is, their lag became greater.
Here are the specific statistics for the five very broad jobs categories out of the 23 for which data are …
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