Immigrants’ Contributions to Working Wisconsin
Immigrants are indispensable to the Wisconsin economy. Some 320,000 immigrants call Wisconsin home, generating $23 billion in economic output each year. They are business owners, health care providers, educators, and skilled tradespeople, filling roles from software development to agriculture. Federal data shows that in 2023, immigrants made up 7% of the Wisconsin workforce, and according to Kids Forward, immigrants made up 11% of the state’s Main Street business owners, 16% of physicians, 9% of construction workers, and more than 60% of manicurists and pedicurists in 2022. Immigrant workers are essential to our dairy industry and make up 12% of the state’s agricultural workforce. In the tight labor markets, these workers sustain industries and services that keep Wisconsin thriving.
The federal mass deportation campaign has raised uncertainty and fear for immigrants and their families. The fear has negative economic impacts that spread throughout the economy according to research summarized by Immigration Research Initiative (IRI). In their report, IRI draws on results from the National Bureau of Economic Research that
“arresting and deporting immigrants results in a cascade of job loss. Immigrants who are arrested lose their jobs directly. Other immigrants, including many who have work authorization, experience a chilling effect and stay home or leave the country. And, as the consumer base shrinks and co-workers who support the daily operation of local businesses are arrested, U.S.-born workers also lose their jobs.”
The report finds that for every 1,000 ICE arrests of immigrant men, employment among immigrant men considered most at risk fell by 2.5%, while employment among U.S.-born men fell by 0.54%. The study also found no increase in wages for U.S.-born men who remain employed. These effects reflect the broader economic disruption caused by mass arrests and deportations: consumer spending declines, businesses lose workers, and immigrant and U.S.-born workers often fill complementary rather than competing roles. Increased enforcement is also associated with more workplace accidents and minimum wage violations as workers become less willing to report unsafe conditions or labor violations. There are further impacts on all working families. Fear of immigration enforcement can push immigrant care workers out of regulated child care jobs, making it harder for other parents to work, while lost income can create financial instability for families.
For more on the economic effects of mass deportation, see the full report, Labor Market Impacts of ICE Activity in Trump 2.0.
The Economic Policy Institute’s Cost of Deportations Calculator offers another way to understand the scale of these costs, showing how much states and communities spend on deportation and what those resources could otherwise fund, including teachers, firefighters, nurses, Medicaid, child care, and other public investments. The state of Wisconsin’s share of the federal investment in these mass deportation campaigns is a staggering $3.8 billion— $1,728 from every taxpayer in the state. Shifting that money from deportations to community needs could allow Medicaid to bring health insurance to 183,000 Wisconsinites, or hire more than 14,000 teachers to work in our schools.