Economic growth simply stated comes from people who work, and work more productively.
Improving the economy implies more workers — either immigrants, or inducing native-born workers to re-enter the workforce — and productivity gains. Trump’s economic forecast implies almost doubling the growth in productivity from the current level of about 1.7% a year.
Assuming a doubling of productivity — starting now — fails, then its rosy forecast of 3% annual gross national product growth vs the current trend of 1.7% is utterly dependent on immigrant workers, perhaps even more than the government projects, if productivity fails to soar. Here is why.
Between 1995 and 2005, half of the growth in the country’s workforce came from immigrants. That is far higher than in past modern decades Between 2005 and 2015, the workforce growth was 36% from off-spring of native born parents, 18% from off-spring of immigrants, and 46% from immigrants. Between 2015 and 2015, the off-spring of native-born parents will show a absolute decline in the workforce of 4.3 million, while off-spring of immigrants will grow by 5.7 million and immigrants by 3.5 million. No immigrants means a decline in total workers.
See Jason Furman and Pew Research Center.