Report: Ohio’s economy, seniors at risk if immigrant workers decline

By Farah Siddiqi

As President Donald Trump makes good on campaign promises to deport immigrants living in Ohio and across the U.S., a new report spotlighted the economic risks to Social Security and other programs relying on payroll tax revenues.

With Ohio’s population aging faster than the national average, experts said immigrant workers play a critical role in keeping programs like Social Security and Medicare solvent.

Josh Bivens, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute and the report's author, said historically normal GDP growth rates will be impossible to maintain without immigrant workers.

"It does make things like Social Security and Medicare a little harder to sustain," Bivens pointed out. "If we have a steady flow of younger immigrant workers coming in, that just makes it much easier to sustain those really important social insurance programs."

Medicare and Social Security are largely funded by today’s workers, regardless of their immigration status, through payroll taxes. In Ohio, immigrants make up about 5% of the workforce, contributing more than $3.5 billion in state and local taxes each year, according to the American Immigration Council.

The Trump administration said it hopes to deport 1 million immigrants annually to secure borders and jobs for U.S.-born workers.

Increases in immigration lead to more jobs overall and higher wages for U.S.-born workers, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. Bivens warned losing immigrant workers will also hurt U.S.-born workers.

"The really immigrant-heavy part of residential construction is maybe the framing and digging out the foundation," Bivens explained. "If that doesn’t get done, the part of construction that is more intensive in the use of U.S.-born workers, like maybe the electrician and the plumber, they can’t do their work."

Immigrants make up nearly a fifth of the U.S. workforce and fill essential roles in construction, agriculture, and health care; all major industries in Ohio. Economists warned deportations could deepen labor shortages, drive up costs and slow economic growth as the state’s senior population continues to rise.