Historic immigration decline could damage the hotel industry

NATIONAL REPORT — The U.S. Census Bureau reports that net migration fell across every metropolitan area in the country in 2025, with the U.S. recording net negative migration nationally for the first time in at least 50 years, according to the White House.

A White House press release described the figures as “a historic turnaround on immigration.”

But for the hospitality industry, which has historically depended heavily on immigrant labor, the trend could have significant long-term implications. According to both the U.S. Travel Association and the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA), travel supported the jobs of 15 million U.S. workers in 2024 and directly created 8 million jobs, and approximately one-third of those workers were immigrants. 

Stephen Yale-Loehr, a retired immigration law professor at Cornell, warned that the impact on the hospitality sector’s workforce may still be in its early stages.

Although some of the administration’s attempts to end Temporary Protected Status for various nations (TPS grants work authorization to hundreds of thousands of immigrants) have been challenged in the courts, Yale-Loehr predicts the fallout could be “like a tsunami wave that is coming but has not hit yet nationally.”

“If those terminations are upheld, then I think we will see a long-term decline in the hospitality industry workforce,” he said.

Labor union Unite Here said it believes this workforce contraction is already well underway. Unite Here represents roughly 300,000 hotel, casino, restaurant and airport workers across the U.S. and Canada.

The hospitality industry ended 2025 with 98,000 fewer workers than the year before, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data cited in “Inhospitable,” a February report from Unite Here examining the impact of U.S. immigration policy on the hospitality sector.

Unite Here attributes the decline in part to a loss of immigrant workers, estimating that the Trump administration has put the work authorization of more than 2 million immigrant workers “in deep uncertainty.”

“What’s happening when they get deauthorized, effectively, is that other workers are left to fill the gaps,” said Unite Here international president Gwen Mills.

This shrinking workforce comes as U.S. hotels continue to grapple with staffing shortages and rising labor costs, according to a late February survey of 246 hoteliers by the AHLA. Workforce shortages and labor costs were cited among their top concerns for this year, with 65% of respondents flagging labor costs as a pressure point and 42% citing workforce shortages as a top worry. Half of the survey’s respondents said their properties are “somewhat understaffed.”

The loss of immigrant workers does not translate into jobs for U.S.-born workers, said Economic Policy Institute president Heidi Shierholz, adding that the Trump administration appears to be operating under an “absolutely false notion” that it does. 

“If you deport a workforce of immigrant roofers and framers, fewer houses will be built, so U.S.-born electricians and plumbers also lose their jobs,” she said. “The impacts really ripple out.” 

She also cited Economic Policy Institute research forecasting that if the administration succeeds in its goal of deporting 1 million immigrants a year, nearly 6 million jobs will be lost by the end of Trump’s term, including 2.6 million held by U.S.-born workers.

Julia Gelatt, an associate director with the Migration Policy Institute, said it remains unclear whether a shrinking immigrant workforce will significantly slow the hospitality industry’s growth or simply accelerate its shift toward automation. Still, she sees one outcome as likely.

“What history would suggest is that everything is going to get more expensive,” she said. “With fewer workers available, wages will rise, and it will be more expensive for all of us to enjoy various parts of the hospitality industry.”

This story originally appeared in Travel Weekly.