Over 1.2 million immigrants — legal residents and those in the US illegally  — disappeared from the labour force from January through the end of July, according to Census Bureau data analysed by the Pew Research Centre.

Immigrants make up almost 20 per cent of the US workforce and that data shows 45 per cent of workers in farming, fishing and forestry are immigrants, according to Pew senior researcher Stephanie Kramer. 

About 30 per cent of all construction workers are immigrants and 24 per cent of service workers are immigrants. The loss in immigrant workers comes as the nation is seeing the first decline in the overall immigrant population after the number of people in the US illegally reached an all-time high of 14 million in 2023.