How Will AI, Tariffs, and Deportations Impact Our Workforce?

We all know the headlines keep changing which means making any predictions is senseless. Yet here are a few non-negotiable trends among the winds.

Trend #1: The combination of baby-boom retirements plus our plunging birthrate equals a worsening worker shortage.

I’ve asked the U.S. Census Bureau for the future numbers for ages 18 to 64, the workforce ages, and the results are that the current numbers will have tiny growth going forward, about one percent every five years, while our economy hopes to remain tops in the world. And while the baby-boomers will eventually all leave the workforce, our birthrate will continue to plunge as not only births but also marriages, dating, and sex remain in steep declines.

We can blame some of this on cell phones which have replaced friendship for many of us, providing entertainment, fake relationships, and more. As just one example of how much we Americans now want to be alone, a full 74% of recent total restaurant sales were for “off-premise” eating, meaning delivery or take-out[i]. People don’t want to sit with others in public places anymore.

Trend #2: Deportations will mostly impact agriculture, construction, hospitality, and manufacturing.

While these are most-mentioned industries, our company C-Suite Analytics has cut turnover in meat-packing plants and they must also be included. Our government has pledged to deport one million per year, with no apparent or published plan for others to take their jobs.

Trend #3: Tariffs will not only increase inflation but also make manufacturing hiring even more difficult.

One goal of tariffs is to return more manufacturing to America, whereas US manufacturing has withered through 500,000 job openings per month for several years already.[ii] And trends #1 and #2 above will make this worse.

Trend #4: AI will replace many jobs, too early to tell.

The problem with assigning a hard number here is not only that nobody knows, but those inventing the software appear to be inflating it. One neutral-thinking prediction is that AI will impact 14% of the global workforce to change careers by 2030.[iii]

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Further Reading:  Will AI Replace Enough Jobs to Fix Worker Shortage?

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Analysis: How the Dots Connect

Trend #1, our worsening worker shortage, brings more impact that the other trends because we are flat-out running out of workers, so the other trends just make this worse or change the make-up of the remaining workers we will have. Trends #2 and #3, deportations and tariffs, mostly impact blue-collar jobs, whereas trend #4 regarding AI mostly impacts white-collar jobs. And it’s unlikely that unemployed white-collar workers will be seeking out blue-collar work. So those industries that employ blue-collar workers like those mentioned prior… manufacturing, hospitality, food processing, and certainly agriculture…will most likely take the biggest hits regarding worker availability.

Nurses and teachers are two other jobs that jump out regarding current and future shortages. High turnover rates plus continued help-wanted indicators for those jobs and others in their industries are worrisome today, and there is no sign that AI will help us to provide the talents and warmth that nurses and teachers bring.

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Further Reading: 100% Tariffs on One-Size-Fits-All Programs

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The Longer-Term Workforce Shortage Problem

Looking back at Trend #1, there is no way that the US can maintain it’s dominant economic position globally by growing our workforce by just one percent every five years. Yet this plot thickens because baby-boomer retirements plus birthrate plunges have been consistent for each of our first-world economy peers. South Korea’s birthrate is the lowest in the world.

And while rich countries slowed having babies, poor countries did not such that future winners will be the countries that can source the highest number and most productive of all immigrants from those highly-fertile and less powerful nations.

Americans, however, consistently want fewer immigrants versus more, given that half of us want our current number of immigrants reduced[iv]. Perhaps this is because we confuse immigration with the constant news-bashing about our Mexican border. Our world is bigger than Mexico. And immigrant-bashing from any US source won’t help.

Much more detail is available in my upcoming book, Targeting Turnover: Make Managers Accountable, Win the Workforce Crisis, which will be available in September. I welcome your questions and feedback at dfinnegan@c-suiteanalytics.com

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[i] The Atlantic, The Anti-Social Century by Derek Thompson, February, 2025.

[ii] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/companies-are-struggling-to-fill-manufacturing-positions-let-alone-plan-for-what-trump-s-administration-has-in-mind/ar-AA1FS3Xm?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=79a46abb73794011aaac1cae1950c9a9&ei=53

[iii] https://explodingtopics.com/blog/ai-replacing-jobs

[iv] https://news.gallup.com/poll/647123/sharply-americans-curb-immigration.aspx