Health Care’s Employment Growth Clouded by Immigration Crackdown, Medicaid Cuts

The health care sector is a positive point in the economy this year, leading almost half of the country’s employment gains, but economists and experts say that immigrant repression and the imminent MEDICAIDS cups are a threat to future employment growth.

Employers added 487,000 jobs from January to August, according to the latest non -agricultural pay data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The health care sector represented 48% of this dull growth, developing around 232,000 jobs, even if the sector only lends 11% of workers.

“On the work side, the growth of health care stimulates the economy,” said Stanford economics professor Neale Mahoney.

Economists claim that the repression of immigration by President Donald Trump and the reduction in public insurance programs threaten to slow down this growth. They could add discomfort on the economy and cause the GOP-contrary winds in the mid-term elections next year. The health care sector unusually depends on workers born abroad, while a new law reducing federal expenses on the Medicaid program of $ 900 billion per year is projected, on the basis of a preliminary version of the bill, to trigger the loss of 1.2 million jobs nationwide, according to the Commonwealth Fund.

In recent years, the growth in health care employment has been the most pronounced in the home health sector, increasing nearly 300,000 jobs to 1.82 million workers from August 2019 to August 2025, while millions of older residents hire workers to visit and take care of it, said Mahoney. Employment growth has also been strong in hospitals and doctors’ offices. Nursing homes and residential care homes displayed lower figures from 2019 to 2025 in the middle of an increase in the number of people using home care.

Some research indicates that the growth in health care is not always good for the economy. For example, an increasing number of administrators in health care can increase health care costs without offering many advantages to patients. However, health care jobs are considered stable and often resistant to recession, and the health care industry is now the best employer in most states. Even with employment growth in the sector, many places remain desperate for health workers to meet growing demand.

But several economists have said that recent changes in federal immigration and Medicaid policy could lead to employment growth.

If the Trump administration’s immigration repression continues, it could be difficult for health care organizations to find enough people to hire. “Health care as an industry depend enough the work of immigrants,” said Allison Shrivastava, an economist in the hiring laboratory. “He has a large part of the non-native workforce, so he will be more affected.”

About 18% of Americans employed in health care were born abroad, according to data from the 2023 census office. And approximately 5% of health workers were not citizens, including around 60,000 doctors and surgeons, 117,000 authorized nurses and 155,000 home or personal care, according to census data.

Many of these workers are legally here; The census office does not follow the number of non-citizens living in the United States with authorization. But even those who have legal status, including permanent residents, can be vulnerable to expulsion. The federal government expelled around 200,000 people from February to August, a significant increase compared to previous months, according to data obtained by The Guardian.

At the same time, some health workers may choose not to study or move to America if they perceive it as hostile to immigrants. The number of immigrant visas issued by the United States from March to May fell by around 23,000, or 14%, from the same period from last year, according to data from the State Department. In addition, attempts to pass unauthorized borders have dropped.

Shrivastava said that employment employment data show that the high demand for doctors has continued to help employers with the visa sponsorship process. But it is not clear if people will take them on the offers.

Meanwhile, Congress this summer adopted what the Republicans called “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”, which was quickly signed by Trump. This bill makes around $ 910 billion in federal Federal Medicaid expenditure over 10 years, according to a KFF analysis of the Congressional Budget Office data.

Medicaid discounts should lead to millions of people without health insurance in the coming years. Hospitals, nursing homes and community health centers will have to further absorb the cost of processing unlimited people by reducing services and employees, or close.

The cuts could have a significant impact on the labor market. California alone could see up to 217,000 less jobs, two thirds of which were in the health care sector, according to an analysis of the University of the University of California-Berkeley led before the finalization and the signature of the bill.

“This does not necessarily mean that 200,000 people will lose their jobs,” said Miranda Dietz, acting director of the health care program at Labor Center. “Some people will lose their jobs and, in some cases, employment growth will not be as fast as expected.”

The recent dismissal by Trump of the official who directed the statistical branch of the Labor Department, which has concerns that the data on employment will not be free from political influence.

It is not clear when – or if – immigration actions and Medicaid cuts will affect hiring in the health care sector, but there are signs of potential softening. Federal data showed a significant drop in job offers in the health care and social assistance sector in July. Indeed, data on the publication of employment also shows a drop in certain areas of health care, but Laura Ullrich, director of economic research in North America in the hiring laboratory, noted that, overall, publications remain above prepondemic levels.

For the moment, employment growth should remain high, especially among practitioner nurses, medical assistants and home aid, according to BLS projections.

Numerous health care jobs require years of higher education, but have a high salary, family physicians generally earning more than $ 240,000 per year and authorized nurses generally taking around $ 94,000 per year.

Joshua Lejano, president of the California Students’ Association’s Sacramento State section, said that he was “prudently optimistic” that he would quickly get an authorized nurse job when he graduated in December. He said he was finishing nursing clinical rotations that offer him real world experience that will condition him for long teams.

Lejano said hospitals in his region have increased the capacity while some veteran nurses leave the profession due to the cocovid pandemic professional, creating openings. “Right now, I think the great thing is to stay above all the application cycles,” he said.

Health care jobs that do not require so much training tend to pay much less. The annual median profits for around 4.4 million health and personal care assistance at home was around $ 35,000 last year, almost equivalent to paying waiters and waitresses, according to federal data.

The growth of health care jobs has been particularly beneficial for women, said Ullrich. According to a recent recent study. Research has revealed that workers represented more than a million new health care jobs in the past two years.

The sector is resilient, said Shrivastava, because the Americans generally do not consider health care as a luxury good: they pay it in good and bad times. Health insurance costs are on the right track for their biggest leap in at least five years. In addition, health care spending is often focused on the elderly and very old, a group develops considerably as the age of baby boomers. The number of Americans aged 65 or over increased from 34 million in 1995 to 61 million in 2024.

“Many of these health care jobs aim to support the growing population of older Americans,” said Ullrich. “So it is not surprising that we see growth there. But I think what is surprising is how unbalanced is.”

Phillip Reese is a specialist in data reports and associate professor of journalism at the California State University-Sacramento.

This article was produced by Kff Health Newspublishing California Healthlinean editorially independent service of California Health Care Foundation.