More than 1 million foreign-born workers left labor market since March

In perhaps the strongest sign yet that President Donald Trump's efforts to deport illegal immigrants, encourage self-deportation, and clear the workforce of foreign competition is working, the St. Louis Fed reported that more than one million foreign-born workers left the workforce since March.

In March of this year, the foreign-born labor force amounted to 33.719 million people, according to the St. Louis Fed. By May, however, that figure had fallen to 32.706 million, reflecting a drop of 1.013 million foreign-born workers.

By contrast, the overall civilian labor force went from 170.653 million in March to 170.216 million in May, for a drop of 0.437 million. The noticeable disparity in exits by place-of-birth appears to reflect more than simple exits from retirement or other conventional factors.

In March of this year, the Trump administration began to seize on data highlighting jobs growth specifically for "native-born" workers, specifically highlighting that they gained 284,000 jobs in February while foreigners lost 87,000.

"For the first time in 15 months, the job gains for native-born Americans... exceeded job gains for migrant and foreign-born workers," Trump celebrated at the time. "You've heard the same stat where foreign workers were taking up all the jobs."