The states that need immigration most? You’d be surprised.
The policy that would help rural states most is one their voters and officials are most likely to resist.
John Bitzan is director of the Challey Institute for Global Innovation and Growth at North Dakota State University.
The most recent jobs report contained a number that deserves more attention than it got: U.S. labor force participation fell to 61.5 percent — the lowest level since March 2021 and, setting aside the pandemic years, the lowest since 1976.
That pain will not be spread evenly. Employers in rural states have struggled for years to attract and retain workers. Now many of the tightest labor markets in the country are in some of the most rural places. North and South Dakota currently have the two lowest unemployment rates in the nation. These lower numbers reflect not just lower job turnover and better skills matches than the rest of the countr, but also difficulty in finding workers. As the latest numbers collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed in December, North and South Dakota each had about two job openings for every unemployed worker.
This creates a political and economic paradox. The policy most likely to help many of these states gain the workers they need is also the one many of their voters and elected officials are most likely to resist: more legal immigration.
A new study from my institute shows what that help could look like. Using data on economic activity and population from every U.S. state for the period between 2008 and 2023, we estimate that a 1 percent increase in a state’s population from increased immigration would raise private-sector GDP by 1.5 percent on average.
The gains would not be evenly distributed. Depending on the state, the rise in GDP caused by a 1 percent immigration-driven population increase ranges from 0.57 percent to 4.41 percent. Rural and less populous states often see the largest benefits. Montana and Mississippi each show estimated gains of 4.0 percent. South Dakota is at 3.1 percent. West Virginia is at 3.0 percent.
By contrast, the gains are smaller in many of the large states where immigrants have traditionally concentrated. California is at 0.6 percent. Texas is at 0.57 percent. New York and Florida are each at 1.1 percent.
In other words, immigration may matter most in the places that receive too little of it.
The last presidential election was about more than immigration and restrictions on it. But it is still worth noting that 20 of the 25 states with the largest estimated economic gains from immigration voted for Donald Trump in 2024. The exceptions include rural states such as Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire.
The point is not that voters in these states are wrong to care about border security. A country has a right to enforce its laws and decide who enters. Nor is immigration a substitute for better schools, stronger families, higher labor force participation among native-born Americans or policies that make work more rewarding.
But border security and economic realism are not the same issue. The United States can enforce its immigration laws while also recognizing that many rural labor markets need more legal workers, not fewer.
Immigrants do not just fill jobs. They also create them. They start businesses, buy homes, pay taxes and expand the customer base for local firms. Immigrants account for roughly a quarter of new business owners in the United States. In small communities, where the loss of a few employers, a few families or a few classrooms can change the future of a town, that kind of population growth matters.
The demographic picture makes the issue more urgent. The Census Bureau estimates that net international migration, which peaked at 2.7 million in 2024, fell sharply in 2025 and could drop to roughly 321,000 in 2026 if current trends continue. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the ratio of working-age Americans to those 65 and older will decline from 2.7 today to 2.2 by 2056. Without more legal immigration, CBO projects, the U.S. population will begin shrinking in 2030.
Rural America is already living with the consequences of an aging and declining population. In many rural communities, deaths outnumber births. Young people leave for college or work and do not always return. Employers can offer higher wages, but that does not solve the problem if there are too few workers to hire in the first place.
Our study finds one more result that should matter to conservatives: The economic gains from immigration are largest in states with higher levels of economic freedom.
That should not be surprising. Conservatives have long argued that prosperity follows when people are free to work, invest, build, buy, sell, and start businesses. The same logic applies to people who want to come to the U.S. to work and build a life. When immigrants enter states where markets are relatively open and opportunity is easier to pursue, the gains are larger.
Rural America does not have a worker shortage because it lacks ambition. It has a worker shortage because too few people are available to build, farm, care, serve, manufacture, and start businesses there.
Immigration will not solve every problem facing rural states. But without more legal immigration, many of the states most committed to growth may end up inadvertently choosing decline.
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