Cycle on Jul 20, 2026

I will start by listing the current open threads and reading the existing notes for this topic to understand what has already been investigated and what specific directions are prioritized.

I will now list the existing notes for this topic using `read_notes` to see what has already been documented and understand the current state of our findings.

I will search for any new, major empirical papers, working papers, or publications in 2026 on the economic impacts of immigration on native wages, employment, or specific sectors (like agriculture, construction, H-1B, etc.). I will also look for recent CBO or DHS demographic/immigration updates to see if we can update the watch thread or write a new finding. First, let's search for "immigration native wages employment working paper 2026" and similar queries to see what recent evidence has landed.

Let's look at the search results. Several interesting and highly relevant papers/publications appear: 1. "Gender, Selection into Employment, and the Wage Impact of Immigration" by George J. Borjas, published in the Journal of Labor Economics (JOLE) in 2026 (or early 2026/late 2025). Let's fetch or investigate this paper, as it directly relates to "Selection Bias in Native Responses: Reconciling the Employment and Wage Impacts of Immigration" or might be a new paper. 2. "Unauthorized Immigration Effects on Local Labor Markets" - FRBSF Economic Letter (February 2026). This is highly relevant to post-pandemic unauthorized immigration and local labor markets. Let's search for and fetch this too. 3. "The Employment Effects of Immigration Enforcement: An Initial Assessment" in American Affairs Journal (May 2026). Let's search for this to see what and who wrote it. 4. "Immigration's Effect on US Wages and Employment Redux" by Caiumi and Peri (NBER Working Paper 32389, originally 2024, but let's see if there's any updated version or discussion). First, let's search for "Gender, Selection into Employment, and the Wage Impact of Immigration" by George Borjas to understand its findings, methodology, and how it fits into the literature. Let's do a search for its details.

Let's fetch the paper by George Borjas and Anthony Edo, "Gender, Selection into Employment, and the Wage Impact of Immigration", published in JOLE (Journal of Labor Economics) in April 2026 (electronically published February 9, 2026). Let's see if we can fetch one of the open access versions or the NBER paper (w28682 is the working paper, but there's a revised version or the JOLE paper itself). Let's do a fetch of `https://gborjas.scholars.harvard.edu/resource/jole2026` or the NBER page or search for summaries. Let's try `web_fetch` on `https://gborjas.scholars.harvard.edu/resource/jole2026` first. Wait, let's look at the NBER version or search for its abstract and findings. Let's fetch NBER working paper w28682's PDF if there is a way, or fetch the Harvard HKS summary page: `https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/mrcbg/programs/growthpolicy/gender-selection-employment-and-wage-impact-immigration`. Let's fetch that page.

This is extremely relevant! It matches the existing note `selection-bias-native-employment-wage-impacts`. The paper "Gender, Selection into Employment, and the Wage Impact of Immigration" by George J. Borjas and Anthony Edo was published in the *Journal of Labor Economics* in April 2026 (electronically published in February 2026). Let's fetch the actual PDF or search for the text of this paper to get some verbatim quotes and understand how they adjusted for the selection bias and what the specific findings are. Let's see if we can search for the paper's contents or fetch some other pages. Let's search for "Gender, Selection into Employment, and the Wage Impact of Immigration" "French immigrant" "wage elasticity" to see if there are detailed summaries or if we can fetch the PDF or get quotes from it. Let's do a search.

Let's fetch `https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28682/revisions/w28682.rev0.pdf` to read the actual text. Wait, is it too long or can we fetch a page that has the text of the PDF? Let's check if we can fetch it. If it's a PDF, `web_fetch` might return it if it is converted to markdown or if it fails. Let's try to fetch it. If it fails or is too large, we can search for specific quotes in the paper. Let's try `web_fetch` on `https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28682/revisions/w28682.rev0.pdf` or search for terms. Let's search first for specific paragraphs or texts from the PDF to see if there's a cached text version or if we can find quotes. Let's try a search for `"Adjusting for the selection bias results in a similar wage elasticity"` to see if we can get the abstract or introduction text. No, the abstract says: "Adjusting for selection bias results in a wage elasticity that becomes negative for women and similar to men." (or between -0.8 and -1.0 in some versions). Let's fetch the Harvard scholars page or search for the exact text of the PDF. Let's try to fetch `https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w28682/revisions/w28682.rev0.pdf`. Let's see what happens.

This is a masterpiece of a paper! Let's summarize what we have found and how it relates to our existing notes. The paper is **"Gender, Selection into Employment, and the Wage Impact of Immigration"** by George J. Borjas and Anthony Edo, published in the *Journal of Labor Economics* in April 2026 (online/electronically published in February 2026). It provides a major methodological and empirical reconciliation of a long-standing puzzle: why immigration sometimes appears to have a negative impact on native employment but little to no impact on native wages, or vice versa, especially when comparing men and women. Let's look at our existing notes: - `selection-bias-native-employment-wage-impacts` (Selection Bias in Native Responses: Reconciling the Employment and Wage Impacts of Immigration) - `labor-economics-consensus-skill-groups-nasem` (Labor Economics Consensus: Skill-Group Effects and the NASEM Report) - `cepii-meta-analysis-wage-effects-immigration` (CEPII Meta-Analysis (2025): The Comprehensive Wage Effects of Immigration) The Borjas and Edo (2026) paper directly addresses the selection bias puzzle and provides concrete empirical documentation from the French labor market. Let's see if we can update the note `selection-bias-native-employment-wage-impacts` with this newly published 2026 paper, which was in working paper form earlier but is now officially published in the *Journal of Labor Economics* (April 2026) with precise, peer-reviewed estimates. Wait, let's search for "Unauthorized Immigration Effects on Local Labor Markets" FRBSF Economic Letter (February 2026) to see if we can find more details or another paper that we should write about or integrate. Let's do a search.

Let's fetch the FRBSF Economic Letter: `https://www.frbsf.org/research-and-insights/publications/economic-letter/2026/02/unauthorized-immigration-effects-on-local-labor-markets/` using `web_fetch` to see what it says and how it fits into the note `unauthorized-immigration-local-labor-and-housing-markets`.

This is an excellent, extremely recent piece of empirical research (February 17, 2026) from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco by Daniel Wilson and Xiaoqing Zhou (referencing their 2025/2026 working paper "Wilson and Zhou (2025)"). It directly addresses: 1. "The rapid rise in unauthorized immigration beginning in 2021 and its slowdown starting in 2024" (extending to mid-2025). 2. Uses a novel dataset of *unauthorized immigrant worker flows* (UIWF) based on individual-level immigration court data from TRAC (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse). 3. Evaluates the local labor market effects across commuting zones and industries. 4. Finds a nearly **one-for-one** causal effect of UIWF on local employment growth in both the rapid rise (March 2021 to March 2024) and the slowdown (March 2024 to March 2025) periods. 5. Notes that the slowdown of net immigration had a large negative impact on local employment, particularly for **construction** and **manufacturing**. Let's look at our existing notes. We have a note called `unauthorized-immigration-local-labor-and-housing-markets`. We should update this note with this brand new 2026 FRBSF research and findings. Let's first read the existing note `unauthorized-immigration-local-labor-and-housing-markets` if we can. Wait, can we read its content? Let's use `read_notes` to see if we can get the full content, or if we need to search for it. Ah, `read_notes` only returns slug, title, preview, updated_at, and source_count. It doesn't return the full body. But wait, we can fetch it or read it if it's stored somewhere, or we can just write a note with the same slug (`unauthorized-immigration-local-labor-and-housing-markets`) and it will overwrite/update it. Wait, let's search if there's any file in `/var/lib/hey-lefty/notes/` representing our notes. Let's see if we can find the files. Let's do a quick list of notes or read them. Wait, let's look at the workspace path: `/var/lib/hey-lefty/notes/019e89b4-58b3-7e3b-a0c2-6a68bd3242db/019e89d0-1359-70a2-95cf-80adebbdd875` Let's list files in the workspace to see if there are markdown files of the notes. Let's run a bash command? No, we don't have a bash execution tool here! We only have: - `list_threads` - `record_thread` - `resolve_thread` - `record_watch` - `record_event` - `read_notes` - `write_note` - `market_view` - `web_search` - `web_fetch` - `finish_cycle` Ah! We can only interact via these tools. That is fine. Let's see if we can read notes using `read_notes`. Wait, `read_notes` has a parameter `topic_id`. Let's see if we can get the full body of a note. Wait, `read_notes` description says: "List the current set of notes for a research topic. Returns slug, title, preview, updated_at, and source_count for each note so the cycle can reference prior findings without re-fetching them." Wait, does it return the body if we don't specify a limit or is there another way? No, it only lists them. But wait, since we want to revise a note, we can write a note with the same slug. If we write a note with the same slug, it will update it. Wait, let's look at the existing note `unauthorized-immigration-local-labor-and-housing-markets`. Let's see if we can search for our own notes or if they are stored in the workspace. Since we don't have a file reading tool, we can just write the updated notes based on the prompt's instructions. Wait! Let's check if there are other papers or articles we should search for. Let's search for "The Employment Effects of Immigration Enforcement: An Initial Assessment" in *American Affairs Journal* (May 2026) which appeared in our first search. Let's search for it.

Let's fetch `https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2026/05/the-employment-effects-of-immigration-enforcement-an-initial-assessment/` to see what it says. It is written by Steven A. Camarota and Jason Richwine (who are researchers associated with the Center for Immigration Studies, CIS). Let's fetch the article or an excerpt of it.

Ah, the fetch failed due to a timeout. Let's try to fetch `https://cis.org/Camarota/Excerpt-Excerpt-Employment-Effects-Immigration-Enforcement-Initial-Assessment` or search for the contents of the article. Let's search for "Steven A. Camarota" "The Employment Effects of Immigration Enforcement: An Initial Assessment" "American Affairs" to see what the core findings, claims, and data are.

Let's search for "The Employment Effects of Immigration Enforcement: An Initial Assessment" "Trump" OR "Biden" or "findings" or "E-Verify" to see what the article's core arguments are. Let's do a search.

Let's fetch `https://cis.org/Camarota/Excerpt-Employment-Effects-Immigration-Enforcement-Initial-Assessment` to see if we can get a good summary or some quotes from the authors on this topic. This is highly relevant to `immigration-enforcement-native-employment-impacts`. Let's fetch it.

This is an excellent source. Let's see if we can search for the numerical claims mentioned in the search snippets: "Comparing January of 2025 to February 2026 shows that the number of employed native workers is up 412,000, while the number of employed..." Let's search for "Comparing January of 2025 to February 2026 shows that the number of employed native workers is up" to see if there are more details.

Ah, the quote is from the *American Affairs* article itself. Let's do a search for `"employed native workers is up 412,000"` to see if we can find more of the text of that article through other pages or quotes.

Let's see if we can search for other quotes or summaries of the article. For instance, let's search for "The Employment Effects of Immigration Enforcement: An Initial Assessment" "labor force" or "Camarota" "Richwine" "employed" "foreign-born" and "native" to get a better sense of their arguments. Let's do a search.

Ah, the search budget is spent. That is fine, we have a wealth of high-quality, primary evidence! Let's synthesize the evidence we have gathered: 1. **Borjas & Edo (2026) in Journal of Labor Economics (April 2026): "Gender, Selection into Employment, and the Wage Impact of Immigration"** - **Context:** France experienced a rapid "feminization" of its immigrant labor force starting after a 1976 policy shift that granted the right to family reunification. - **Puzzle:** The raw correlations showed a striking gender asymmetry: immigration had a negative impact on the wages of native men but zero impact on their employment rates, while for native women, immigration was negatively correlated with employment rates but had essentially zero correlation with wages. - **Methodology:** They develop a model of labor demand and labor force participation (Heckman selection model) to adjust for selection bias. - **Key Finding:** The near-zero correlation between immigration and female wages is an artifact of selection bias. Low-wage native women left (or did not enter) the labor market in response to the immigrant supply shock. When this selection bias is corrected, the wage elasticity for native women becomes negative and statistically significant, ranging between -0.8 and -1.0, which is nearly identical to the elasticity found for native men (between -0.7 and -0.9). - **Crowd-out parameter:** The implied crowd-out parameter $\gamma$ for women is approximately 0.55, meaning that about 6 native women left the workforce for every 10 new immigrants who entered. - **Implication:** Standard wage regressions that do not adjust for selection bias are systematically biased. Native labor supply responses (crowd-out) and the non-random composition of those who remain in the workforce (survivors) heavily contaminate the estimated wage impact of immigration. 2. **Wilson & Zhou (2025/2026) from SF Fed (February 17, 2026): "Unauthorized Immigration Effects on Local Labor Markets"** - **Context:** The rapid rise in unauthorized immigration into the United States from March 2021 to March 2024, followed by a steep decline/slowdown from March 2024 to March 2025 (extending into mid-2025). - **Methodology:** Novel county-level dataset of *unauthorized immigrant worker flows* (UIWF) based on individual-level immigration court data from TRAC (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse). It links UIWF with employment data from the Census of Employment and Wages (CEW) across commuting zones. To solve endogeneity, they use a shift-share instrument based on historical settlement patterns. - **Key Finding:** They find a nearly one-for-one causal effect of UIWF on employment growth in both the rapid rise period and the slowdown period. Specifically, a 1% increase in UIWF relative to local employment raises local employment by 0.92% in the rapid rise period and by 1.16% in the slowdown period. - **Sector-specific findings:** - The rapid rise period had particularly large effects on employment in leisure and hospitality, professional services, and other services. - The slowdown period (March 2024 to March 2025) had particularly large negative effects on employment in construction, manufacturing, and other services. The construction effect is notable as it suggests the slowdown in unauthorized immigration slows down residential construction and housing supply growth. 3. **Camarota & Richwine (May 2026) in American Affairs: "The Employment Effects of Immigration Enforcement: An Initial Assessment"** - **Context:** The rapid swing in immigration policy and demographic trends. Under the Biden presidency (2021-2025), the immigrant population rose from 45.0 million to 53.3 million, reaching a record 15.8% of the U.S. population by January 2025. Following Trump's inauguration and enforcement policies, the immigrant population declined in 2025 and early 2026. - **Key Finding:** The authors argue that the sudden decline in the immigrant population represents an opportunity for U.S. workers, and some theorized benefits (such as drawing more low-skill natives back into the labor force) are beginning to emerge. For example, comparing January 2025 to February 2026 shows that the number of employed native workers is up by 412,000, while the foreign-born population declined. - **Critique/Context:** They emphasize that a *sustained* policy of low immigration/enforcement is necessary over the long term to fully realize wage and employment gains for the most vulnerable low-skilled Americans. Let's check the existing notes to see which slugs to reuse/update: - `selection-bias-native-employment-wage-impacts`: "Selection Bias in Native Responses: Reconciling the Employment and Wage Impacts of Immigration" * We will update this note with the newly published JOLE 2026 paper by Borjas and Edo, detailing the Heckman selection model, the French context, and the reconciled wage elasticities (-0.8 to -1.0). - `unauthorized-immigration-local-labor-and-housing-markets`: "Unauthorized Immigration and Local Labor and Housing Markets: Post-Pandemic Evidence" * We will update this note with the February 2026 FRBSF Economic Letter by Daniel Wilson and Xiaoqing Zhou, detailing the one-for-one employment effects and the sector-specific impacts of the post-2024 slowdown on construction and manufacturing. - `immigration-enforcement-native-employment-impacts`: "Immigration Enforcement: Native Employment Impacts and the Complementarity Trap" * We will update this note with the May 2026 American Affairs article by Camarota & Richwine, detailing the initial assessment of the Trump administration's enforcement/decline in immigrant population and the reported 412,000 increase in employed native workers. Let's also pull the public-markets data if applicable. Wait! The prompt says: "This topic has the public-markets datasource. When it concerns a company, sector, or the macro backdrop, your FIRST research step is to call market_view to pull the cited figures, then write findings grounded in them. Do not finish the cycle as 'nothing to work with' before pulling the relevant view — the data is here. Every finding that states a number must cite the view's /markets URL. Warm sectors: agriculture, chemicals, construction, energy, food-beverage, metals-mining, real-estate." Let's call `market_view` for the `Construction` sector, since the FRBSF Economic Letter specifically highlights how the slowdown in unauthorized immigration has a large negative impact on construction employment, which could slow down residential construction and housing supply growth. Let's do that! This is extremely relevant to grounding our findings in real market data. Let's make that call.

Let's also call `market_view` for `macro` since the backdrop of unemployment and CPI is highly relevant to labor economics and the overall context of the U.S. labor market. Let's make that call.

This is fantastic! Let's write our findings and update the corresponding notes. Let's review the notes we want to write/update: 1. **`selection-bias-native-employment-wage-impacts`** - **Title:** Selection Bias in Native Responses: Reconciling the Employment and Wage Impacts of Immigration - **Content:** Update with George J. Borjas and Anthony Edo's newly published peer-reviewed study in the *Journal of Labor Economics* (April 2026), titled "Gender, Selection into Employment, and the Wage Impact of Immigration". - Highlight the model of selection bias, the French "feminization" of the immigrant labor force after the 1976 family reunification policy, and how the "zero-effect" on female native wages is a compositional illusion. - State the corrected wage elasticity of -0.8 to -1.0 for women, similar to the -0.7 to -0.9 for men, and the crowd-out parameter of 0.55 (about 6 native women leaving the workforce for every 10 immigrants entering). 2. **`unauthorized-immigration-local-labor-and-housing-markets`** - **Title:** Unauthorized Immigration and Local Labor and Housing Markets: Post-Pandemic Evidence - **Content:** Update with the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco's Economic Letter (February 17, 2026), titled "Unauthorized Immigration Effects on Local Labor Markets" by Daniel Wilson and Xiaoqing Zhou. - Detail the post-pandemic unauthorized immigrant worker flows (UIWF) based on TRAC court data, showing the rapid rise (March 2021 to March 2024) and subsequent slowdown (March 2024 to March 2025). - Document the nearly one-for-one causal effect of UIWF on employment growth. - Highlight the sector-specific effects, particularly the large negative impact of the slowdown on the **construction** and **manufacturing** sectors. - Ground the construction sector impact in the market view of major construction firms (such as Caterpillar CAT, Vulcan Materials VMC, Martin Marietta MLM, and Masco MAS) from our public-markets tool, linking to the `/markets/sector/construction/2026/07/20` URL and noting the macro backdrop of 4.2% unemployment from `/markets/macro/2026/07/20`. 3. **`immigration-enforcement-native-employment-impacts`** - **Title:** Immigration Enforcement: Native Employment Impacts and the Complementarity Trap - **Content:** Update with the May 2026 study by Steven A. Camarota and Jason Richwine in *American Affairs*, titled "The Employment Effects of Immigration Enforcement: An Initial Assessment". - Detail the unprecedented rise in the immigrant population under the Biden administration, peaking at 53.3 million (15.8% of the population) in January 2025. - Document the decline in 2025 and early 2026 under the Trump administration's enforcement policies. - Report their initial assessment that native employment rose by 412,000 from January 2025 to February 2026 as the immigrant population declined, suggesting that low-skilled native workers are beginning to return to the labor force. - Contrast this with the FRBSF findings that immigration slowdowns drag down construction and manufacturing employment growth. Let's write these notes. I will proceed with writing the first note, `selection-bias-native-employment-wage-impacts`.

I will now write the second note, `unauthorized-immigration-local-labor-and-housing-markets`, incorporating the February 2026 Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Economic Letter by Daniel Wilson and Xiaoqing Zhou, and grounding it in public markets and macro data.

I will now write the third note, `immigration-enforcement-native-employment-impacts`, incorporating the May 2026 American Affairs article by Steven A. Camarota and Jason Richwine.

I have successfully updated all three notes with the latest 2026 empirical evidence, integrating public-market and macroeconomic data to ground the findings. Let's review the watch thread `CBO and DHS Annual Net Immigration Estimates` (ID: `019eca51-dd39-7e01-b94d-142c0b0a0599`). The watch is an ongoing watch to monitor updated annual estimates of net unauthorized immigration and legal permanent resident (LPR) flows from the CBO and DHS. We have found some net migration figures in the Camarota & Richwine (2026) paper (citing Census Bureau and other sources: Biden's four years saw the immigrant population rise from 45M to 53.3M, net international migration was revised to 4 million for 2022 and 2023 combined, and reached 2.8 million in 2024). However, let's keep the watch open as an ongoing watch so that future cycles can continue tracking official DHS and CBO updates as they land. Let's register any new watches or threads if needed. The current findings are extremely comprehensive. Is there any new forward-looking dated catalyst or tripwire? We could register a watch on the next CBO demographic outlook update or DHS annual immigration statistics release. Let's check if we should open any new threads. We have resolved the core questions of this cycle. Let's call `finish_cycle` to complete this research cycle.

This research cycle has successfully adjudicated what the most credible, recent empirical evidence says about how immigration affects native wages and employment. By focusing strictly on a labor-economics perspective, we have reconciled key disputes with three major, newly published studies from the first half of 2026. Here is a summary of the findings and how they advance the core thesis of this topic: ### 1. Reconciling the Wage-Employment Puzzle: Selection Bias & Gender Asymmetry * **The Study:** George J. Borjas and Anthony Edo, *"Gender, Selection into Employment, and the Wage Impact of Immigration,"* **Journal of Labor Economics** (April 2026) [[selection-bias-native-employment-wage-impacts]]. * **The Insight:** Standard spatial correlations often show a puzzling gender asymmetry—e.g., in France, immigration has a clear negative impact on male wages but zero impact on male employment, while for women, immigration has a negative impact on employment but zero impact on wages. Borjas and Edo prove that the "zero wage effect" for women is a compositional illusion. * **The Mechanics:** In response to the immigrant supply shock, low-wage native women left (or did not enter) the workforce. Because these low-wage workers exited, the average wage of the remaining female "survivors" rose mechanically, masking the downward wage pressure. * **The Reconciled Estimates:** Once selection bias is corrected using a Heckman selection model, the wage elasticity for native women becomes negative and statistically significant, ranging between **-0.8 and -1.0**—which is nearly identical to that of native men (between **-0.7 and -0.9**). Additionally, the female crowd-out parameter is estimated at **0.55**, meaning that roughly 6 native women left the workforce for every 10 immigrants who entered. ### 2. Post-Pandemic Unauthorized Flows: The One-for-One Local Employment Impact * **The Study:** Daniel Wilson and Xiaoqing Zhou, *"Unauthorized Immigration Effects on Local Labor Markets,"* **Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Economic Letter** (February 17, 2026) [[unauthorized-immigration-local-labor-and-housing-markets]]. * **The Insight:** Utilizing a novel county-level dataset of *unauthorized immigrant worker flows* (UIWF) based on individual-level immigration court records from TRAC, the authors track the rapid rise (2021–2024) and subsequent enforcement-led slowdown (2024–2025) of unauthorized immigration. * **The Mechanics:** Using a shift-share instrumental variable strategy, they find a nearly **one-for-one** causal relationship between UIWF and employment growth. An increase in UIWF equal to 1% of local employment raises local employment by **0.92%** during the rapid rise and **1.16%** during the slowdown. * **Sector-Specific Volatility:** While the rise boosted hospitality and professional services, the post-2024 slowdown has hit **construction** and **manufacturing** disproportionately. Commuting zones with the largest slowdowns in unauthorized immigration experienced the sharpest declines in construction employment growth, representing a major supply-side constraint on residential housing supply. * **Public Markets Anchor:** These supply-side constraints occur against a macro backdrop of **4.2% unemployment** and a **4.57% 10-year Treasury yield** [[/markets/macro/2026/07/20]]. Major public construction and materials firms—such as Caterpillar (**CAT**, $405.45B cap, +22.2% YoY revenue), Vulcan Materials (**VMC**, $37.41B cap, +7.4% YoY revenue), and Martin Marietta (**MLM**, $33.78B cap, +17.2% YoY revenue) [[/markets/sector/construction/2026/07/20]]—face a structural drag on labor supply that could limit infrastructure and residential output capacity. ### 3. Immigration Enforcement: Native Labor Re-entry vs. The Complementarity Trap * **The Study:** Steven A. Camarota and Jason Richwine, *"The Employment Effects of Immigration Enforcement: An Initial Assessment,"* **American Affairs** (May 2026) [[immigration-enforcement-native-employment-impacts]]. * **The Insight:** Under the Biden administration, the U.S. immigrant population rose to a record **53.3 million (15.8% of the population)** in January 2025, with a net migration of **2.8 million** in 2024 alone. Following the Trump administration's enforcement shift in 2025, the immigrant population declined. * **The Mechanics:** Camarota and Richwine report that comparing January 2025 to February 2026, the number of employed native-born workers rose by **412,000**, with prime-age, non-college-educated native workers beginning to re-enter the labor force as immigrant competition receded. * **The Tension:** While restrictionist models suggest enforcement directly opens up jobs for native-born workers, other empirical literature warns of the **complementarity and capital trap** [[low-skilled-immigration-complementarity-sudden-stop]]. When faced with sudden low-skilled labor shortages, firms often automate, downsize, or shift capital rather than hire native workers at higher wages. Combined with the FRBSF findings of construction supply drags, a sustained decline in immigrant flows may act as a structural constraint on macroeconomic growth even as it draws some marginal native workers back into the labor force. These updated findings demonstrate that while the immigration debate is highly politicized, the labor-economics literature offers scrupulously neutral, mathematically rigorous answers at the margins. Standard unadjusted correlations heavily underestimate the wage impact of immigration due to native selection bias, while the post-pandemic swings in unauthorized immigration show a highly symmetric, nearly one-for-one impact on employment growth with severe sector-specific bottlenecks.