Research · June 2026 · 6 min read
The claim resurfaces every time a jobs report lands: immigrants took 90% of the jobs created since COVID. It comes with a chart and a caption that says this explains everything. People argue about it for a few hundred replies and move on, and hardly anyone checks where the number actually came from.
Short version, before the detail: it's roughly right for one stretch of years, it's misleading the way it usually gets framed, and it stopped being true sometime in 2025. The rest of this piece walks through why.
Where the 90% number comes from
The figure started with the Center for Immigration Studies, which tracks employment by nativity using the Bureau of Labor Statistics household survey, the Current Population Survey. After the government reweighted that survey in early 2025 to better capture recent immigration, CIS reported that about 88% of employment growth since January 2020 had gone to foreign-born workers, roughly 4.7 million of 5.4 million net new jobs. The press picked it up, social media rounded it to 90%, and it usually arrived alongside the point that US-born employment over the same period barely moved.
An earlier version of the analysis was even blunter. Measured from late 2019 to late 2023, every bit of net job growth went to immigrants, because the count of employed US-born workers had actually slipped while immigrant employment climbed.
So the 90% isn't invented. It's just fragile. Two things move it a lot: which start and end dates you choose, and the population adjustments BLS makes every January. Shift the window by a single year and the share can swing by tens of points. That sensitivity is the part that never makes it onto the chart.
Is it actually true?
For the COVID-recovery window, somewhere between 2019 and 2024, yes. Foreign-born workers took the large majority of net employment growth. That much is real. The useful question is why, and that's where the viral version falls apart.
Most of it comes down to demographics. The native-born population in its prime working years has been shrinking as the big older cohorts age into retirement. The Congressional Budget Office had penciled in net immigration of about 1 million for 2023; the real number came in above 3 million. Employers staring down severe worker shortages during the post-pandemic boom hired whoever was available, and a lot of that labor was foreign-born.
The rest is about timing. Native-born workers left the labor force in huge numbers during the pandemic, through early retirements, caregiving, and disability, and they came back slowly. Foreign-born workers returned faster. In the years right after 2020, immigrants filled most of the new jobs largely because native-born employment was still climbing back to where it had already been.
None of this requires native-born workers to be losing. The prime-age employment rate for US-born Americans has been running at its highest level in two decades. The economy wasn't a fixed set of jobs that immigrants grabbed first. It grew, and immigrants happened to fill an outsized share of the additions during an unusual few years.
What changed in 2025 and 2026
That snapshot is already out of date. Native-born employment recovered, and the immigration side went into reverse. A wave of restrictive policy in 2025 cut sharply into the inflow, and foreign interest in US jobs fell with it: the share of clicks on US job postings coming from abroad dropped to about 1.4% by April 2026, the lowest reading since the start of the pandemic. The broader labor market cooled too, with the economy losing jobs in some months and unemployment drifting up toward 4.4%.
The ratio that powered the meme was a product of the recovery, not a fixed feature of the economy. Citing "90% of jobs went to immigrants" as a current trend in 2026 describes a labor market that no longer exists.
Foreign-born workers by the numbers (2025)
BLS published its annual report on foreign-born workers, covering 2025, in late spring. The headline figures:
- Foreign-born share of the labor force: 19.1%, near a record but flat from 19.2% in 2024 (it was 18.6% in 2023).
- Unemployment: 4.2% for foreign-born workers, essentially even with the 4.3% rate for native-born workers.
- Labor force participation: 66.3% for foreign-born vs. 61.6% for native-born.
- Foreign-born civilian labor force: over 32 million, up from around 31 million in 2023.
The participation gap is the most durable difference in the whole dataset, and it's mostly about age. The foreign-born workforce skews toward prime working years, while the native-born side carries a much larger share of retirees.
Which jobs and places rely most on foreign-born workers
Foreign-born workers cluster in specific corners of the economy, which is exactly why this matters for local pay. By the BLS occupation breakdown, they're overrepresented in service work (22% of foreign-born employment vs. 15% of native-born), in construction, maintenance, and other natural-resource trades (14% vs. 8%), and in production and transportation (16% vs. 12%). They're underrepresented in management and professional roles (35% vs. 46%). Among men the construction gap is the widest: foreign-born men are more than twice as likely as native-born men to work in the building trades.
Geographically, the foreign-born share of the labor force runs highest in the West, around 24%, and the Northeast, around 23%, and lowest in the Midwest at roughly 11%. By metro, Census data puts the heaviest concentrations in Miami, San Jose, Los Angeles, New York, and Houston. Several of those are also among the priciest places in the country to live. There's a reason for the overlap, though it isn't simple cause and effect: gateway metros pull in immigrants and also happen to have expensive housing. The question that matters for workers is whether pay in those cities keeps up with the cost of living, and it often doesn't.
What it means for wages
Foreign-born full-time workers earned a median of about $1,059 a week in 2025, against $1,236 for native-born workers. That's roughly 86 cents on the dollar, a gap of about 14%. But the average hides a more interesting split by education:
- Less than high school: native-born workers earn more, about $805 a week vs. $745.
- High school diploma: native-born again, about $995 vs. $851.
- Bachelor's degree or higher: foreign-born workers earn more, about $1,762 vs. $1,735.
That last line tends to surprise people. The foreign-born earnings edge shows up at the top of the education ladder, not the bottom, driven by high-skill immigration into tech, engineering, and healthcare. Lower down the ladder, native-born workers out-earn their foreign-born peers, reflecting differences in occupation, industry, language, and region.
Why the 90% stat is misleading even when the math holds
A number can be technically correct and still tell the wrong story. "90% of jobs went to immigrants" implies a fixed pile of jobs being divided up, with immigrants at the front of the line. That isn't how it worked. The economy added jobs. Immigrants filled most of the additions during the recovery because native-born workers were still returning and the native-born prime-age population was shrinking. Pick a different window, or just wait a year, and the share falls apart, which is precisely what 2025 showed.
Policy arguments built on that one figure are leaning on a snapshot from a strange moment and treating it like a permanent law. It was never that.
What this means for affordability
Our salary data comes from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, which doesn't break out workers by nativity. But the foreign-born numbers explain patterns you'll run into all over AffordMap.
Construction wages swing widely from state to state partly because the size of the trades labor pool does, and the foreign-born share is a big piece of that. Software salaries pile up in a handful of metros because the high-skill talent pool, foreign-born pipeline included, concentrates in those same expensive cities. And the gap between a sticker salary and a livable one is the whole reason cost-of-living adjustment matters: a cook making $15 an hour in Miami is in a completely different position than a cook making $15 in Louisville. The raw wage tells you almost nothing until you adjust for what it actually buys.
The bottom line
Foreign-born workers are about 19% of the labor force and did account for most net job growth during the COVID recovery. That's a fact from BLS data. It reflects demographics and the speed of the rebound rather than a fixed pool of jobs being handed out, and by 2025 and into 2026, with native-born employment recovered and immigration falling fast, the pattern had flipped.
If you're comparing pay across cities or careers, the foreign-born workforce share is worth knowing. It shapes the local labor supply and moves median wages, and both vary a lot from one metro to the next. We're working on surfacing it directly on AffordMap's location and occupation pages.
FAQ
Did immigrants really take 90% of new jobs since COVID?
For the window from just before the pandemic through 2023 or 2024, foreign-born workers did take most net employment growth. Estimates range from "essentially all of it" to about 88%, depending on the exact dates. The figure is very sensitive to those dates and to the population revisions BLS makes each January, and it's already dated: native-born employment recovered and immigration dropped sharply in 2025.
Why did foreign-born employment grow faster than native-born?
Higher labor force participation (66.3% vs. 61.6%), a quicker return to work after the pandemic, a shrinking native-born prime-age population, and an immigration surge in 2022 through 2024 that ran well past forecasts.
Do foreign-born workers earn less than native-born workers?
On average, yes, about 86% of native-born median weekly earnings ($1,059 vs. $1,236 in 2025). It reverses at the top: workers with a bachelor's degree or higher who are foreign-born out-earn their native-born peers.
Which states and metros have the most foreign-born workers?
By region, the West and Northeast have the highest foreign-born labor force shares and the Midwest the lowest. By metro, Census data puts Miami, San Jose, Los Angeles, New York, and Houston at the top.
Is this still happening in 2026?
No. The trend behind the viral claim has reversed. Foreign interest in US jobs sits at a multi-year low, immigration has been sharply restricted, and native-born employment has recovered.
Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Foreign-Born Workers: Labor Force Characteristics -- 2025"; BLS Current Population Survey; Center for Immigration Studies and press analyses of CPS job-growth decompositions; Indeed Hiring Lab (2026). Job-growth share estimates vary by source and time window.