Overview
- The Bay Area Council Economic Institute report, released Wednesday, estimates that removing the region’s undocumented workforce would reduce annual output by about $67 billion by stripping away productive capacity rather than shifting jobs to other workers.
- Researchers count roughly 477,000 to 478,000 undocumented residents in the Bay Area who work or seek work, with labor-force participation around 73% to 75%, notably higher than among U.S.-born residents.
- Immigrants fill outsized shares of key roles that are hard to backfill, including maids and housekeepers (82% immigrant, about 40% undocumented) and large portions of janitors, cooks, construction workers, home health aides, and landscapers.
- Undocumented workers earn an estimated $21.5 billion a year and pay more than $8 billion in state and local taxes, bolstering consumer spending and public budgets across the nine-county region.
- Employers report lower foot traffic, more missed shifts, and slower hiring tied to enforcement fears, and the removal of a primary undocumented earner typically cuts a mixed-status household’s income by about 69%, intensifying local ripple effects.