A new Brookings Institution report found that the post-pandemic migration surge may have reduced average wages across the workforce while pushing rents higher. The findings put hard numbers behind costs that working Americans faced during former President Joe Biden’s term.
Breitbart News reported that millions of migrants entered the United States during Biden’s presidency. Brookings examined how that influx affected wages, employment and housing.
The results require careful reading. Brookings estimated that average wages for all workers may have fallen by as much as 1.5%. It also found that immigrant demand raised rents between 1.4% and 1.6%.
Brookings found a different outcome for native-born workers. Their wages rose 0.9% overall, while native-born employment remained roughly unchanged.
That distinction matters, but it does not erase the broader result. A lower average wage and higher rent still shape the economy in which every worker, renter and family must compete.
The Brookings report, “How did the post-pandemic migration surge affect labor and housing markets?” offered this assessment:
“The influx may have reduced average wages of all workers by as much as 1.5%, likely in part because immigrants took lower-wage jobs. But U.S. natives’ wages rose 0.9% overall and native-born employment was roughly unchanged,”
The wording points to a labor-market composition effect. Brookings said immigrants filled lower-wage jobs, which helped pull down the average across all workers. It did not find a broad decline in native-born wages or employment.
But averages do not pay a family’s monthly bills. The report’s labor finding arrived beside a direct housing cost, where added demand met a market already divided by location, price and income.
Brookings described the rental effect this way:
“Housing demand formed by the new immigrants caused rents to rise by 1.4 to 1.6%, the paper finds, but native renters’ wages rose by more, increasing at least 1.6% net of the rent increase,”
That caveat gives the report’s full picture. Native renters, as a group, gained enough in wages to exceed the estimated rent increase. Yet the averages cannot guarantee that each renter received the wage gain or faced only the average increase.
That is where Washington’s broad economic claims often lose contact with household reality. The same national policy can produce a favorable average for one group and a steeper monthly payment for another.
Brookings does not stand alone on the housing question. A Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas analysis reported in June examined unauthorized immigrant worker flows from early 2021 through early 2024.
The Dallas Fed research tied those flows to both house prices and rents in local markets:
“… we find that during the boom period an increase in unauthorized immigrant worker flows [UIWF] equal to 1% of a local area’s initial employment increased local house prices by 2.2% and increased local rents by 1.4%,”
The Dallas analysis then estimated that unauthorized immigrant worker flows could explain about 30% of total house-price growth and 20% of total rent growth during the boom period in the average local market.
Those figures address a narrower category than the Brookings study. Brookings examined the wider post-pandemic migration surge, while the Dallas Fed focused on unauthorized immigrant workers. The studies should not be blended into one claim.
They do point in the same direction on housing. More people competing for homes and apartments increased prices in the markets studied. The debate is over the size and distribution of the cost, not whether new demand existed.
A Housing and Urban Development investigation published last year found that migration increased prices for low-income Americans who did not receive public assistance.
That group deserves more attention than it usually receives. These Americans lack the income cushion of wealthier households and the public aid available to some lower-income residents. A rent increase reaches them directly.
The Brookings numbers may look modest when written as percentages. Household budgets do not experience them as an academic exercise. Rent comes due each month, and families must cover it before spending on anything else.
The wage finding carries a similar warning. Brookings found that native wages rose overall, but it also estimated that average wages across the whole workforce fell by as much as 1.5%. Both findings can be true at once.
That is precisely why elected leaders should stop reducing immigration policy to slogans. Scale matters. Timing matters. So do housing supply, local labor conditions and the ability of communities to absorb rapid population growth.
The housing and labor effects unfolded while Americans were also moving between states. The New York Post reported that Florida, Texas and North Carolina posted large migration gains, while California, New York and Illinois lost the most residents.
The 10 states gaining the most domestic migrants had average income-tax rates of 3.8%. The 10 losing the most had an 8% average, and several major gainers imposed no state income tax.
Fox News reported that Republican-led states added about 341,000 jobs after February 2020. Democratic-led states remained roughly 1.3 million jobs short as of May.
Domestic migration and international migration are not the same issue. Still, both show that people, jobs and housing demand do not spread evenly. They cluster in real communities with limited homes, local wage scales and existing residents.
Government cannot wave away those pressures with national averages. Policies made in Washington land in particular apartment buildings, job markets and neighborhoods.
The Brookings findings do not support every sweeping claim made in the immigration debate. Native-born wages rose, native employment barely changed, and native renters’ wage gains exceeded the estimated rent increase overall.
But the report also does not support the claim that mass migration carries no economic cost. It found lower average wages across all workers and higher rents caused by new immigrant housing demand.
The Dallas Fed figures add another layer. In the local markets it studied, unauthorized immigrant worker flows accounted for a sizable share of house-price and rent growth during the boom period.
HUD’s findings bring the focus back to Americans with the least room in their budgets. Low-income residents without public assistance cannot treat higher housing prices as an abstract tradeoff.
A serious immigration system must consider more than the number of people who enter. It must also account for whether wages, housing and local services can absorb the pace without shifting costs onto citizens and lawful residents.
The first duty of public policy is to the people who must live with its results. On wages and rent, the numbers have now made those results harder to dismiss.
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