Immigration boosts the Philly region’s population and helps support STEM, Welcoming Center study finds
The report took on a broad array of topics, from investment, to innovation, to spending power, to labor.
The Philadelphia region benefits from immigration in myriad ways, a new Welcoming Center study says, as people who come here from other lands boost local populations, add brain power, and hold and create jobs.
The report looked at changes and growth across the five-county area of Philadelphia, Montgomery, Delaware, Chester, and Bucks, and in some cases compared those places to Pennsylvania as a whole.
The study, Building Collective Prosperity: Immigrant Impact in the Philadelphia Region, was released Tuesday during an event and panel discussion at WHYY in Center City. It looked at immigrants and their contributions without regard to immigration status.
It took on a broad array of topics, from investment, to innovation, to spending power, to labor.
It showed how immigrants stopped or slowed population decline in the region.
For instance, between 2020 and 2025, the study said, Bucks County would have lost about 6,400 people without immigration. Instead its population grew by 1,276. Delaware County would have shrunk but grew instead. Chester and Montgomery Counties would have grown anyway, but grew even more.
Immigrants are almost the entire reason the state population has grown since 1990, the study said.
“Ask yourself this question,” Anuj Gupta, president and CEO of the Welcoming Center, told a crowd that gathered for the report’s release. “If we continue down a path where we are pulling people out of our communities, and making it impossible for people to come here, what does that mean for us? … Managing decline is not a posture you should elect to aim for.”
The Welcoming Center is a Philadelphia-based nonprofit that works to strengthen communities by creating opportunities for immigrants of all backgrounds, education, and skills. It offers core programs in English and digital skills, work readiness, entrepreneurship, and community leadership.
Some other study highlights:
Housing:
The home-ownership gap between native-born and foreign-born residents has nearly closed in Philadelphia. Nearly 52% of each group owns homes.
Immigrant households across the five-county region have built nearly $60 billion in home equity, almost double since 2015.
H-1B Visas:
An H-1B is a temporary, employer-sponsored work visa that allows companies to hire foreign professionals in specialized fields.
Philadelphia and Chester County together account for two-thirds of the region’s H-1B certified positions. The overwhelming majority of H-1B roles are in computing and tech.
H-1B certifications in the region declined from 2025 to 2026 across every county but Delaware, which saw an increase of two.
STEM:
Immigrants make up 16% of the state’s STEM workforce, nearly double their share of the overall population.
In Chester County, almost one in three STEM workers is an immigrant, despite immigrants being only one of eight in the county’s total workforce.
