Alabama’s labor shortage may grow by tens of thousand people if President Trump carries out his plan to do mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, economists say.

“It’s going to make a tight labor market tighter,” said Art Carden, professor of economics and Samford University. “A lot of the jobs immigrants do exist precisely because the immigrants are here to do them.”

It’s not easy to get firm numbers. But an estimated 60,000 undocumented immigrants live in the state, according to the American Immigration Council. And that’s about 1.8% of Alabama’s workforce

“We do have some exposure to agriculture, leisure and hospitality and certain skill levels in manufacturing. And typically, it’s ag related manufacturing anyways, like the chicken (plants) up in the north and then a few farms. That’s why we are not that exposed,”said Dr. Sam Addy, an economist at the University of Alabama.

Undocumented immigrants in Alabama typically work in agriculture, hospitality, construction, housekeeping, and other areas where they don’t need to speak proficient English. In the Gulf area they often work seafood processing jobs.

“They tend to have jobs with lower wages and worse working conditions than Americans who are better educated and have more skills,” said Allison Hamilton, executive director of Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice who said immigrants mostly do jobs Americans don’t want.

Undocumented immigrants make up roughly a third of the state’s total immigrant population of 183,500. Immigrants in general play an outsized role in Alabama’s labor market. They make up just 3.6% of the population, but account for 5.1% of the state’s labor force, with even bigger shares of industries like construction.

Among all immigrants in Alabama, 23.6% are from Mexico and 9% are from Guatemala. An estimated 49,900 U.S. citizens in the state live with at least one undocumented family member, according to the American Immigration Council.

About 40 percent of the state’s population growth since 2023 has come from immigration, according to Thomas Spencer Senior Research Associate Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama. He said it might be possible to refill jobs with citizens who are not currently working, but that will likely require higher pay.

“Employers may have to increase wages to attract workers to industries like poultry processing. Many of those hard to fill jobs have been filled with immigrant labor.”

Alabama has a labor shortage with a 57.6% workforce participation rate, lower than the national average of 62.5%. This year the state renamed the Department of Labor the Department of Workforce as it attempts to increase its workers.

Agriculture was impacted when the state passed a strict bill targeting undocumented immigrants in 2011, said Hamilton.

Carden at Samford pointed to research showing looser immigration restrictions could double global economic output.

Addy said while the loss of any workers shrinks the economy, the numbers of undocumented immigrants in Alabama are small and make that difference marginal.

“I think the fact is the law matters as much as the economy.”