What new Pew data say about the immigrant population in Pa., N.J., and the U.S.

After reaching a peak of 53.3 million in January, the United States’ immigrant population appears to have begun to decline, its first decrease in more than five decades, according to new reports from the Pew Research Center.

That change, the center reported, is likely attributable in large part to a drop in the population of undocumented immigrants, which had reached a record 14 million in 2023. Preliminary data from the U.S. Census Bureau indicate that the number of undocumented immigrants declined this year amid impacts from policy changes under President Donald Trump’s administration, perhaps by as many as one million people.

Between January and June, more immigrants were deported or left the country than entered it, decreasing the immigrant population size to an estimated 51.9 million, Pew found — a 1.4 million-person decrease. As a result, immigrants made up about 15.4% of the U.S. population, down from January’s high of 15.8%.

The overall immigrant population, the center noted, has been affected by a number of policy changes over the last year. In June 2024, for example, President Joe Biden enacted restrictions on asylum applications. And in his first 100 days after taking office in January, Trump signed 181 executive actions concerning immigration in an effort to step up deportations.

Immigrant population trends historically have been important to Philadelphia, which has for decades seen growth largely due to foreign-born residents moving into the city. Census numbers released earlier this year showed many other metro areas also have recently seen gains after years of pandemic population losses, largely due to immigration. Philadelphia was among the metro areas nationwide with the largest number of immigrants in 2023, according to Pew.

“The full effects of these policies remain to be seen, but already they are contributing to a declining immigrant population — especially the unauthorized immigrant population,” the center wrote.

Here are some takeaways from the Pew Research Center’s reports:

The population of undocumented immigrants — Pew used the term unauthorized for people without legal full status — grew sharply between 2021 and 2023, increasing from 10.5 million people to 14 million — the largest increase on record, Pew found. Much of that growth, the center said, was due to an increase in the number of undocumented immigrants who had some protection from deportation, including asylum-seekers and people who were paroled into the country.

Roughly 6 million immigrants lacking full legal status had at least some deportation protections in 2023, a marked increase from 2.7 million in 2021, Pew reported. Those changes came amid Biden administration policies that enabled more immigrants to enter the country with protections, or to gain them quickly after their arrival.

Still, roughly 8 million undocumented immigrants had no protections afforded to them.

Overall in 2023, undocumented immigrants made up 27% of the U.S. foreign-born population, which stood at 51.8 million people that year. But lawful immigration far exceeded that figure, accounting for 73% of foreign-born residents, or about 37.8 million people.

Pew found that as of 2023, more than 11 million residents came to the United States from Mexico, accounting for about 22% of all immigrants. Roughly half of all immigrants came from Latin America, including large numbers from El Salvador, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and others.

However, the report noted, origin regions for newly arriving immigrants did shift from 2021 to 2023, with larger proportions coming from South America and Europe, and smaller ones from Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

Likewise, the number of undocumented immigrants from countries other than Mexico saw an increase from 2021 to 2023, from 6.4 million to 9.7 million. And while Mexico was still the country from which most undocumented immigrants came, it saw “only a little” increase during that time, moving from 4.1 million to 4.3 million, Pew noted.

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Overall, four states were home to a majority of all U.S. immigrants in 2023 — California (11.3 million), Texas (6 million), Florida (5.4 million), and New York (5 million). Figures for Pennsylvania and New Jersey were not provided in Pew’s report.

Among metropolitan areas, New York City was home to 13% of all immigrants, or nearly 6.5 million people, according to Pew estimates. Philadelphia was among the top 20 metro areas, with 820,000 immigrant residents.

As for undocumented immigrants, the same four states led the pack in 2023. But in fifth place was New Jersey, which Pew found was home to 600,000 undocumented immigrants. The top six states in this category, the center noted, have largely not changed since 1980.

Locally, Pennsylvania and New Jersey were among the eight states that saw increases of at least 75,000 people to their undocumented immigrant populations from 2021 to 2023, the report found. Pennsylvania had an estimated undocumented immigrant population of about 300,000 in 2023, according to data from the center.

In 2023, census data indicated that about 33 million immigrants were in the country’s workforce, Pew found. That year, immigrants accounted for 19% of the total U.S. workforce, an increase over the 2003 proportion of 15% — and evidence of a steady increase in immigrant participation in the country’s labor force.

However, between January and June, the number of immigrants in the U.S. workforce, like the number in the U.S. population, decreased. Exact figures were not yet available, Pew said.

» READ MORE: A third of self-employed entrepreneurs in Philly are immigrants, and other insights from new Pew reports

Undocumented immigrants in the U.S. labor force, meanwhile, had also grown, reaching a record 9.7 million in 2023, or 5.6% of the country’s workers, Pew found — and New Jersey, at 9%, was among states with the highest shares. Overall, the group’s representation in the U.S. workforce is larger than its 4.1% of the country’s population, the center noted.

“That’s because the unauthorized immigrant population includes relatively few children or elderly adults, groups that tend not to be in the labor force,” Pew said in its report.