This edition was written by Tara Watson and Sasha Snyder.
💡 New from us: Net Negative Migration, the Federal Student Loan System in 2026, and Early Decision College Admissions Practices
As the first year of the second Trump administration draws to a close, sweeping immigration restrictions and aggressive enforcement have sharply reduced the flow of migrants into the U.S. In a new report, Wendy Edelberg, Stan Veuger, and Tara Watson estimate a range of likely outcomes for net migration in 2025 and 2026. They conclude that, for the first time in at least half a century, net migration in calendar year 2025 was likely near zero or even negative. Their estimates place net migration between –295,000 and –10,000 for the year, and they expect the figure to remain negative in 2026, albeit with considerable policy uncertainty and significant reduction in data transparency. The authors warn that this abrupt slowdown in migration will put downward pressure on employment growth, GDP, and consumer demand.
Edelberg explains the implications of a no-immigration economy for the labor market in a recent opinion piece published in The New York Times. She characterizes low job growth as “the new normal” and challenges the Trump administration’s assumption that fewer migrants will lead to more jobs and higher wages for native-born workers, pointing out that the empirical evidence fails to back this up. While the administration's immigration policies reduced labor supply, they also reduced labor demand. Edelberg expects future jobs reports to show persistently modest growth and suggests that a healthy job market will be defined by a low unemployment rate of 4 to 4.5 percent.
Education policy is also poised for significant change in 2026. In an overview of upcoming economic issues, Sarah Reber highlights how the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) will fundamentally restructure the federal student loan system. By lowering borrowing limits for graduate students and parents, OBBBA is expected to affect nearly a third of all advanced-degree students. Reber anticipates significant implementation challenges for the Department of Education amid substantial staffing cuts. The administrative strain is already evident: the Public Service Loan Forgiveness "buyback" program remains difficult to navigate, while a massive backlog continues to stall Income-Driven Repayment applications.
Admissions practices at selective four-year colleges in the U.S. also remain a source of public debate and legal scrutiny. In a new report, Phillip Levine investigates the use of early decision (ED) and the concern that it disadvantages lower-income students, who may be unable to commit to a college without first seeing all of their financial aid offers. Levine’s analysis shows that the extent of ED use at an institution is unrelated to average revenue or the share of students receiving Pell Grants. These findings suggest that if higher-income students are advantaged in ED in the fall, those advantages are offset by gains for lower- and middle-income students during regular decision admissions in the spring. Colleges may use ED to enroll students who can pay more in the fall, which gives them more flexibility to admit students with greater financial need in the spring.
📖 What we’re reading
Why are mortality rates significantly higher for adults without a college degree compared to college graduates, and why has this disparity widened between urban and rural populations? Between 1992 and 2019, the life-expectancy gap between individuals with and without a four-year college degree more than doubled, increasing from 2.6 years to 6.3 years. During this same period, mortality inequality across different U.S. counties rose by 30 percent, driven by a significant “mortality penalty” for those living in rural areas. In their new paper, Christopher Foote, Ellen Meara, Jonathan Skinner, and Luke Stewart evaluate a variety of explanations for these trends. They identify smoking as the most predictive factor; high smoking rates in rural areas and among the non-college-educated population explain a substantial portion of the rising education-mortality gap and the rural health penalty.
How does a primary earner’s decision to delay claiming affect the financial security of the widowed secondary earner? Sita Slavov shows that while the risk of falling below the poverty line increases upon widowhood, this risk is significantly mitigated if the primary earner delayed claiming benefits until at least their full retirement age. The probability of poverty for a widowed secondary earner is almost 12 percent smaller for each year that the primary earner delayed claiming. This effect is most pronounced in the first four years of widowhood. Slavov also notes that widows of primary earners who claimed early are more likely to require SSI or Medicaid due to low income.
How can public policymakers support students choosing high-value, low-wage occupations? Current public policies and accountability systems often rely on postcollege earnings as the primary measure of value for postsecondary institutions and occupations. This overemphasis on earnings devalues socially essential careers and fails to account for non-wage benefits in assessing job quality. In their recent report, Sandy Buam and Kristin Blagg emphasize the importance of providing students with non-wage information about different fields, including job satisfaction, work flexibility, and social value. They also recommend supporting high-value careers through financial subsidies, loan forgiveness, and direct labor market interventions like salary support for essential workers.
📊 Top chart: The Deportation System under Trump versus under Biden
This month’s top chart, from a recent analysis by The New York Times, shows how ICE has moved thousands of people through detention and out of the country during the Trump administration. Most deportations during the Biden administration occurred through the expedited removal process, which involves detention at the border and then quick removal from the country. Now, deportees often reside in the interior of the county, and once immigrants are held in detention, they are rarely released back into the United States.
➡️ Worth a click
Don’t miss this report from the Economic Policy Institute on how minimum wages are changing across the country in 2026.
Check out this resource from the Vera Institute of Justice, which catalogues the demographic profiles of immigrants by state and locality.
Tune into this podcast series from The Atlantic on homelessness and addiction in San Francisco.
🔎 Wonk's corner
On November 19th, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) posted a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on the issue of “Public Charge Ground of Inadmissibility.” When an immigrant applies for a status change or visa, they can be denied approval based on the assessment that they may become a “public charge.” The NPRM proposes to reverse the current regulations that have governed what constitutes a public charge for over two decades. DHS is currently reviewing the public comments submitted in response to the NPRM, including those from new CESO scholar-in-residence Mark Greenberg and policy researchers at the Urban Institute. Greenberg emphasizes that the proposed rule risks leaving public charge determinations to the subjective evaluations of individual officials, and both comments highlight that the rule could strip a significant portion of immigrant families from the benefits they rely on. More detail on the background of the rule and how it matters for immigrant families can be found in this piece from the Migration Policy Institute. DHS is expected to post a final rule in the coming months.
About the Center for Economic Security and Opportunity at Brookings
The Center for Economic Security and Opportunity (CESO) produces data-driven, nonpartisan analysis to address the United States’ most challenging social policy questions. In a noisy and polarized world, the Center is a trustworthy source for the information and tools policymakers need to build an economy that works for everyone.
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