Foreign-born workers — whether naturalized citizens, noncitizens with work authorizations or undocumented immigrants — comprise nearly 7% of the New Hampshire workforce, according to a report issued by the state Department of Employment Security.
The 11-page report provides a statistical snapshot of the 95,000 Granite State residents born outside the United States. It calls immigrants “a productive and crucial part” of the state’s economy.
It finds that foreign-born New Hampshire residents participate in the workforce at higher rates than native born residents.
Households of naturalized citizens had higher income and lower rates of poverty than those of U.S. born citizens. But noncitizens had higher poverty rates and household incomes slightly lower than native born.
Noncitizens encompass a category that includes residents in the country with work visas, green cards and other work authorizations as well as undocumented immigrants with no work authorizations.
The report comes as the Trump Administration begins a long-anticipated targeting of undocumented immigrants and throws up roadblocks to existing paths for immigrants to legally enter the country.
He has suspended refugee resettlement and asylum programs and questioned the continuation of Temporary Protected Status, which granted legal residency to people from several Central American countries as well as Ukraine and Haiti.
“Industries with a high concentration of non-citizen workers may struggle with labor shortages if widespread deportations, reduced visa quotas, or other anti-immigration policies are enacted,” reads the report.
The sectors with the highest level of noncitizen employment include professional/scientific (4.6%), health care (2.8%), and hotel/restaurant (3.2%) sectors.
The report was posted in early January and relies on data from the U.S. Census, U.S. Department and Homeland Security, the Pew Research Center and the Brookings Institution.
It paints a bifurcated picture of immigration, with foreign born workers holding significant percentages in high-paying fields such as science, dentistry, computer hardware and mechanical engineering.
But they are also concentrated in entry-level occupations such as machine operators, hotel/restaurant workers and personal care.
In the health care and social service fields, 7.3% of workers are foreign born, and 2.8% are noncitizens.
“If we don’t facilitate immigration, there’s really no long-term future for long-term care,” said Brendan Williams, president and chief-executive of New Hampshire Health Care Association, a trade association of nursing homes, assisted living facilities and retirement communities.
County run nursing homes in Cheshire and Hillsborough counties have wait listed potential residents because of staffing shortages, Williams said.
Facilities can’t hire undocumented workers because of verification systems, Williams said. But an underground economy exists with undocumented people working in home-based care.
If that dries up, hospitals and nursing homes will be under more pressure, Williams said. Meanwhile, New Hampshire continues to age; the report estimates that 90,000 New Hampshire residents will age out of their working years by 2033.
“It really is the perfect demographic storm,” Williams said.
The New Hampshire Business Review reached out to the New Hampshire Tech Alliance, a trade group of Granite State tech firms. The alliance did not want to comment, saying members had not been contacted about immigration and other issues emerging from Washington.
According to the report, the Pew Research Center estimated that 15,000 undocumented immigrants lived in the Granite State in 2022, a little more than 1% of the population.
While smaller than Vermont and Maine, New Hampshire’s percentage of undocumented resident workers is far less than those of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut, which all topped 4%.
The report said that both domestic and international immigration brought 62,600 residents to the Granite State between 2013 and 2023. The state will have to maintain similar rates of migration to maintain the size of its workforce.
Greg David, an economist with the state Department of Employment Security, said the industries most impacted by reductions in immigration would be construction, hotel and restaurants, agriculture, food processing and landscaping.
Such businesses are tied to locations and wouldn’t have the ability of others, such as tech firms, to relocate, said David, who worked on the report. They would be forced to pay higher wages, which could be inflationary.
“This is a pretty important economic issue,” David said. “We wanted to have something based on research that is apolitical and fact based and points out some of the benefits immigration brings to New Hampshire.”
Some other findings:
Nearly 7 % of New Hampshire residents, or 95,000 people, are foreign born. Of those, 61% are naturalized citizens, a percentage higher than the U.S. as a whole (52%).
More than 30% of New Hampshire’s foreign-born community originates from Asia and 26% from Latin America. More are born in Canada and India (both 7,600) than any other countries.
The unemployment rate for noncitizens (4.1%) was higher than for naturalized citizens (2.9%) and U.S. born (1.6%). But a higher percentage of noncitizens participate in the workforce (71.7%) than the U.S. born (68.2%).
Foreign born people, both naturalized and noncitizens, have higher levels of graduate and professional degrees than U.S. born residency, mostly because of the EB and H-1B visa programs that target people with advanced degrees. On the other end of the scale, immigrants have higher percentages of people who lack a high school diploma.
Median salaries for naturalized male citizens are slightly higher than those of native-born men, by less than $1,000. U.S. born women have median salaries about $1,300 higher than naturalized women citizens.
Noncitizens had the highest household poverty rate (10.2%), followed by U.S. born (4.3%) and naturalized citizens (3.6%).
Noncitizens had the highest rate of SNAP (food stamp) participation, at 8.7%. But their participation rate in public assistance programs such a Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the main welfare program, was 2.7%, just slightly above that of U.S. born households.
