Thanks Joe: Fed Economists Say Illegal Immigration Under Biden Drove Up Housing Costs By a Whopping 30 Percent

by Margaret Flavin Jul. 6, 2026 12:20 pm



Image: Wikicommons Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license./Author Parker Knight

A worker paper from the Federal Reserve published this spring, ‘The Impacts of Unauthorized Immigration on U.S. Labor and Housing Markets: New Evidence from Administrative Microdata,’ found that the out-of-control surge in illegal immigration under Joe Biden drove up housing costs by approximately 30% of home-price growth, and 20% of rent growth in the average metropolitan area from March 2021 to March 2024.

The paper was authored by Daniel J. Wilson and Xiaoqing Zhou.

Wilson is the Vice President of Macroeconomic and Microeconomic Research at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (FRBSF).

Zhou Current is the Assistant Vice President in the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

According to the report, “From early 2021 to early 2024, the U.S. experienced an unprecedented boom in unauthorized immigration, followed by a rapid slowdown beginning in mid-2024.”

“We provide the first systematic empirical assessment of the labor- and housing-market effects of this episode. Using newly available administrative microdata on individual immigrants, we construct measures of net unauthorized immigration at the national and local levels and exploit plausibly exogenous variation across local markets.”

“We find that unauthorized immigrant worker flows (UIWF) increased local employment approximately one-for-one, without significant declines in local wages. These inflows also raised local house prices and rents without expanding housing supply, consistent with a housing demand shock in the face of short-run inelastic supply.”

“Lastly, we find that UIWF reduced labor income per capita, consistent with downward wage composition of the local workforce, and strongly reduced government transfers. These findings should help inform policy debates surrounding how unauthorized immigrant labor supply impacts local labor and housing markets as well as public finances.”

The authors use individual-level immigration court data and other administrative microdata to measure unauthorized immigrant worker flows (UIWF) at local levels.

Per Fox Business:

Researchers found the influx of illegal immigrants boosted employment with little measurable effect on wages but significantly increased housing demand.

A 1% increase in unauthorized workers relative to a local labor force corresponded with roughly a 1% increase in overall employment, with no evidence the immigration surge reduced average wages. The same 1% increase, however, was associated with a roughly 2.2% rise in home prices and a 1.4% increase in rents. Researchers found little evidence that homebuilding expanded enough to meet the added demand, concluding the influx acted as a housing demand shock in markets where supply was already constrained.

The economists estimate unauthorized immigrant worker flows accounted for about 30% of employment growth, roughly 30% of home-price growth, and about 20% of rent growth in the average metropolitan area between March 2021 and March 2024.

Read the full paper here.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/202...gration-under/