Immigration's Economic Impact | Stats + Stories Episode 395

During the 2010s, the United States netted just under one million new immigrants each year; between 2022 and 2024, that number was closer to three million. But since the election of Donald Trump, immigration to the U.S. has taken a nosedive, and potentially so has the economic growth of the country. The economic impact of the rise and fall of immigration to the U.S. is a focus of this episode of Stats and Stories, with Tara Watson.
Tara Watson is the Director of the Center for Economic Security and Opportunity at the Brookings Institution, where she’s also the John C. and Nancy D. Whitehead Chair of Economic Studies. She is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. Watson’s an economist whose work focuses on U.S. social policy, with interests in the safety net, health, and immigration. In 2015, she served as deputy assistant secretary for microeconomic analysis in the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Economic Policy. In 2021, she published the book ”The Border Within: The Economics of Immigration in an Age of Fear,” co-authored with journalist Kalee Thompson. Earlier this year, Watson published a report with Brookings on the economic impact of immigrants on the U.S. economy.