Could restrictive immigration policy lead to stagnating job growth?

Job growth in this current economy is … squishy, at the moment.

Save for bright spots in health care and the restaurant industry, gains in the labor market are slowing, and unemployment rates are rising. In response to this overall cooling, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates on Wednesday in hopes of providing a lift to the job market — which it's recognized is in a "curious balance."

But what if the tools in the Fed's tool belt aren't enough to boost the job market? That's a concern shared by Harvard economist Jason Furman. He recently joined "Marketplace Morning Report" host David Brancaccio to discuss. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

David Brancaccio: You are concerned there's something going on that could do two things: Get us stuck in slow job growth month after month, and, at the same time, make it so that the Fed lowering interest rates won't really help. Explain what your concern is.

Jason Furman: Yeah. So if you look, in 2023, we were creating about 200,000 jobs per month. In 2024, it was about 100,000 jobs per month, and, this year, it's been about 50,000 jobs per month. But even though we've had this big slowdown in job growth, the unemployment rate is only rising very, very gradually. So what that tells me is that the biggest change that's going on, the biggest driver of the slowdown in job growth is you just don't need as many jobs per month as you used to. And the reason for that is we just have a lot fewer immigrants coming into the country.

Brancaccio: So immigration policy may be at play, and if that's here to stay for the coming few years, at least, you think that will weigh down job creation month after month?

Furman: With an aging population where people are retiring, where the birth rate is not sufficient for a growing population, were it not for an inflow of immigrants, we would probably have zero or even negative job growth. With that, we'd have slower economic growth. We'd have bigger fiscal problems, at least at the federal level. And we've avoided all of that historically by having a large stream of immigrants, immigrants who work at a high rate, as well.

Brancaccio: If the number of workers isn't rising reasonably quickly, you don't have enough people paying taxes to pay for our way of life.

Furman: Yeah. Were it not for immigrants, it would be very few workers supporting each Social Security beneficiary, and we'd have to either have much higher taxes than we have, we'd need to cut Social Security benefits, or we'd need to borrow even more.

Brancaccio: Well, that would be tragically ironic if the vivid calls from President Trump for the central bank to lower interest rates just wouldn't work to help boost the job market because of the dynamic you describe.

Furman: Yeah. And to be clear, there's a lot of labor supply. There's a little bit of labor demand, too, so I was fine with the Fed cutting rates by 25 basis points. It's possible they'll need to cut even more, but the biggest reason jobs have slowed down is something that no interest rate change can affect.

Brancaccio: So, if you're right, there will be those who would call for an easing of the immigration restrictions. Who's going to do that? You're going to be the person to call President Trump and say, "Ease off the war on immigration."

Furman: You know, it is totally reasonable to say we're going to have a secure border. Joe Biden got around to that in 2024, which is why a lot of this job slowdown actually started in 2024. So, I don't want tons and tons of people who aren't authorized to work in the United States to work, but I'd also like us to admit that we do need workers from abroad — absent that, we'd have huge economic challenges in this country. So, legally allow more people in, give a path to citizenship for people who are here, and, yeah, respect and tighten that border.