One Reason the US Added Only 73,000 Jobs in July: Immigration

Much noise had been heard regarding the US adding just 73,000 jobs in July 2025. To put that into perspective, it’s an unusually weak number compared to the last 12‑month average of 162,000 per month, and to July 2024’s 114,000 just one year ago.

The head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics lost her job over it because she supposedly “rigged” the data.[i] Her BLS also greatly lowered the numbers of new jobs for the two previous months. Most gains were in healthcare and social assistance, two categories that are in must-have-workers situations because too many of us are getting older. 

Nearly every other CEO is sitting still, holding back on spending because our economy is in high-stage drama regarding tariffs and immigration.

My Own Stake in This

For employers and for those who are reading along with me, the back-and-forths, on-and-offs about immigration matter more. Tariffs impact companies that import goods and also those of us who will pay more for those goods, whereas immigration will impact whether we can make and import those goods at all.

In my new book titled Targeting Turnover, the same name as this newsletter, I conducted extensive interviews and data dives with the U.S. Census Bureau, and their data then motivated me to search out labor and population projections from the United Nations. My initial query was about two major population trends we all know but it seemed no one had fully researched them, being…

When we connect the many dots between baby boomers leaving the workforce and our steadily decreasing birthrate, how many remaining workers will there actually be?

The answer is NOT NEARLY ENOUGH. Please pardon my shouting but I was as surprised as anyone once I saw both the short-term and the long-term data as the result of this question.

One easy way to explain the outcome is that for as far as our eyes can see, for the rest of this century, at best we will add about one-fifth of the workers to the working-age group of 18 to 64 for each year versus the number that we have added in the past. To give a simple example, if in each past year we had added five new workers, for future years we will add just one.

And beginning in 2030, just an eye- blink in the speed of time, more than half of those who we add to the ages 18-to-64 group will be immigrants, will have been born outside of the US.^[ii]

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Further Reading: Without Immigrants, U.S. Working-Age Population Would Shrink

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Fortunately, or Not, It’s A Global Problem

When I first charted this data, working here on this same keyboard and at this same desk, my first reaction was “How will the US maintain its dominant economic position if we are running out of workers?”

The answer is I don’t really know, but that every industrialized country is in the identical sinking boat, that their births peaked after WWII and have steadily declined since. And while various nations are paying women to have babies by thinking a thousand dollars here or there will help, the absolutely only real-life conclusion is that the countries that immigrate the most and the best immigrants will win.

Some of the data is absolutely astounding. The German working population will reduce by a third by the end of this century, along with Italy, Spain, and Greece losing half of their total workforces, and then Poland, Portugal, Romania, Japan, and China will all lose up to two-thirds of their labor force.^[iii] Another report details that by 2030, that soon, the world will be short by 85 million workers, the approximate population of Germany. Six million of these shortages will be here in the United States.^[iv]

But these two projections grabbed me the most:

• By 2080 the US population will actually begin to decline.^[v]
• And by 2100, 5 of the 10 most populated nations in the world are projected to be in Africa.^[vi]

Back to Current Affairs…and A Remarkable New Trend

The immigration-related headlines are about ICE grabbing US residents of various backgrounds along with the very attention-grabbing alligator-something detention camp here in Florida. But here are a few behind-the-scenes immigration activities that contribute to our economy’s being stuck:

• Our president has indicated that immigration enforcement will slow down for farms and hospitality jobs, as word has gotten through that we cannot grow food without foreign workers.[vii]

• Mark Zuckerberg has searched for and hired the eleven smartest people in the world to build his AI platform, and they are all from other countries.[viii]

• Our federal government is so fearful of our air traffic controller shortage that they are recruiting foreigners for these essential and stressful jobs.^[ix]

And this is happening as our government just proudly announced they have achieved “negative-net-migration”,[x] whatever that is.[xi]

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Further Reading: What China’s HR Leader told Me that Absolutely Cuts Turnover

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Americans Are Watching

When I finished the book manuscript several months ago, Gallup data told us that a greater number of Americans wanted less immigration, not more. I attributed this to our cable news stations’ regular reporting on issues at the Mexican border, regardless of those networks’ political preferences. But more recently Gallup tells us this:

Americans have grown markedly more positive toward immigration over the past year, with the share wanting immigration reduced dropping from 55% in 2024 to 30% today. At the same time, a record-high 79% of U.S. adults say immigration is a good thing for the country.[xii]

One thing I know for sure is that America’s sheer survival will depend on the best immigrants wanting to be here…and they must be lured by what we used to call the American spirit, that statue of liberty thing, beginning with all men…and women…were created equal. But if that’s not your thing, the sheer numbers tell us there are not and will not be enough native-born Americans to keep pace. And we cannot afford to attract immigrants with billions of dollars the way Mark Zuckerberg did.

Let’s close by adding one more example of America’s workforce shortage. Our Air Force is so short on recruits that since they cannot recruit foreigners, they have instead modified their fitness requirements by raising the acceptable levels of body fat. Our Air Force just got fatter in order to better find and retain more recruits.^[xiii]

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Understand the data impacting workforce numbers and get in front of the looming retention and recruiting crisis.

Dick Finnegan’s new book, Targeting Turnover: Making Managers Accountable to Win the Workforce Crisis, publishes this September. Pre-order your copy now to get ahead of the looming workforce retention challenge. Want to purchase 25 copies or more for your team? Visit the bookpal bulk order page for a significant discount – 38% and more!

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[i] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fact-check-trumps-claims-jobless-numbers-rigged/story?id=124353890

[ii] Jonathan Vespa, Lauren Medina, David M. Armstrong, “Demographic Turning Points for the United States: Population Projections for 2020 to 2060,” US Census Bureau, revised 2022; https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2020/demo/p25-1144.pdf

[iii] Sebastian Dettmers, “The Great People Shortage is coming — and it’s going to cause global economic chaos,” Business Insider, October 20, 2022; https://www.businessinsider.com/great-labor-shortage-looming-population-decline-disaster-global-economy-2022-10#:~:text=In%20the%20coming%20years%2C%20many,these%20businesses%20will%20also%20shrink

[iv] Ivana Johnston, “Turning Silver Into Gold: Are Unretired Workers A Solution To The $8.5 Trillion Labor Shortage?”, Forbes, March 25, 2024; https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesagencycouncil/2024/03/25/turning-silver-into-gold-are-unretired-workers-a-solution-to-the-85-trillion-labor-shortage/#:~:text=According%20to%20predictions%2C%20by%202030,first%20time%20in%20U.S.%20history.

[v] US Census Bureau, “US Population to Begin Declining in Second Half of Century,” November 9, 2023 https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023/population-projections.html

[vi]  “By 2100, five of the world’s 10 largest countries are projected to be in Africa,”, Pew Research Center, June 18, 2019; https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/06/17/worlds-population-is-projected-to-nearly-stop-growing-by-the-end-of-the-century/ft_19-06-17_worldpopulation_by-2100-five-of-10-largest-countries-projected-to-be-in-africa-png/

[vii] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/us/politics/trump-ice-raids-farms-hotels.html

[viii] The Times of India, July 5^th, 2025

[ix] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/07/foreign-faa-controllers-trump-hired/683539/?gift=ScXkEZrrEEs7lRNagpuPC1ejJTdJnMl7t1iBCwYhDT0

[x] https://time.com/7307367/negative-net-migration-trump-deportations/

[xi] https://time.com/7307367/negative-net-migration-trump-deportations/

[xii] https://news.gallup.com/poll/692522/surge-concern-immigration-abated.aspx

[xiii] Rachel S. Cohen, “Fatter recruits now welcome as Air Force revises its rules,” Air Force Times, April 3, 2023; https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2023/04/03/fatter-recruits-now-welcome-as-air-force-revises-its-rules/