BOSTON — Almost 400,000 illegal immigrants are already working in the Massachusetts labor force, a new Boston Foundation report admits — even as state unemployment climbs and thousands of legal residents say they can't find a job.

The number — 357,000 — sits on page 17 of "An Uncertain Future: How the Immigration Crackdown Threatens Massachusetts' Labor Force," the same Boston Indicators and MassINC Policy Center report that demanded the Commonwealth take in at least 60,000 immigrant newcomers every year through 2030.

The 357,000 figure is sourced to the Migration Policy Institute's "latest estimates" of the undocumented share of the Massachusetts workforce, the report says. The state's total civilian labor force runs around 3.8 million — meaning roughly one in every 10 working people in the Commonwealth is in the country illegally.

Unemployment is rising

The admission lands at a brutal moment for legal Massachusetts residents trying to find work.

State unemployment hit 4.8 percent in February, up from 4.7 percent in January and from 4.1 percent a year earlier, per state Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development data. The national jobless rate sits at 4.4 percent. Massachusetts is now running worse than the country as a whole.

Layoffs are stacking up. Through May 31, 5,504 layoffs had been announced across the Commonwealth this year, the Boston Globe found in its review of the state's first five months. Sectors taking hits include education, health services, trade, transportation, utilities, leisure, hospitality, manufacturing and professional and business services.

Last year more than 29,600 residents entered the Massachusetts job market — and the count of people unemployed but actively looking for work grew by nearly 27,000. Executives told the Globe they are holding hires back because of tariffs and the uncertain impact of artificial intelligence on staffing needs.

Residents are not staying to wait it out. Out-migration of both people and businesses is accelerating, with high taxes and electricity costs the most-cited drivers.

Where the 357,000 are working

The same Boston Foundation report lays out which Massachusetts industries lean hardest on foreign-born labor — much of which, per its own numbers, is in the country illegally.

Administrative, support and waste management: 36 percent foreign-born
Transportation and warehousing: 31 percent
Manufacturing: 31 percent
Construction: 30 percent
Accommodation and food services: 29 percent
Healthcare and social assistance: 25 percent

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In construction the dependence runs deepest. Contractors interviewed by Boston Indicators "repeatedly described immigrant workers, particularly from Brazil and Latin America, as essential to the functioning of Greater Boston's construction industry," the report says. Subcontracted trades — framing, concrete and painting — are flagged as the ones most reliant on illegal labor.

One developer told Boston Indicators that rumors of ICE activity in East Boston "effectively halted subcontracted work across multiple projects for an entire day." Another HVAC subcontractor lost its lead foreman when he "returned to Brazil," the report says — forcing the company owner to personally manage site operations instead of running the business.

Healey is paying to train more

The state is not just absorbing the 357,000 — Governor Maura Healey is actively spending Massachusetts taxpayer dollars to bring more foreign-born workers into the labor market and train them up.

In January 2024 Healey launched a $10 million pilot program to move up to 400 migrant families out of the state's overflowing emergency shelters and into permanent housing and jobs. The pilot was partnered with eight resettlement agencies — including the International Institute of New England, Catholic Charities of Boston, and Jewish Family Service — with $8 million earmarked for housing transitions and another $2.5 million for refugees before they even entered the shelter system. State HomeBASE funds covered security deposits and first and last month's rent.

A year and a half later, in July 2025, the Healey administration announced another $10 million — this time pulled from the Fair Share millionaire's-tax supplemental budget — to expand workforce training and English-language services for between 3,000 and 3,500 immigrant residents.

The administration has also partnered with the quasi-public Commonwealth Corporation Foundation on a separate track that connects Massachusetts businesses directly to migrants still living in state-funded shelter and still waiting for federal work authorization to clear.

All of it is taxpayer-funded — and rolling out at the same moment Massachusetts unemployment is climbing past the national average and 5,504 in-state layoffs have already hit through May 31.

A 'self-deportation' admission

On page 24 the report makes an admission its authors may not have intended for the general audience.

"Contractors also described workers self-deporting or leaving the U.S. voluntarily because of the increasingly hostile climate," the authors write.

That is the precise outcome the Trump administration has said its policy is designed to produce.

'Growing, though illegal'

The report also flags something else — that Massachusetts employers themselves are now quietly screening out workers whose immigration paperwork looks shaky.

"JVS Boston also reported seeing a growing, though illegal, tendency among some employers — in healthcare and other fields — to avoid hiring workers with temporary or uncertain work authorization for fears that the workers may lose eligibility in the future," the authors write on page 23.

The report calls the practice illegal. State employers are doing it anyway.

What the report wants

The Boston Foundation and MassINC Policy Center's prescription, despite the 357,000 figure on page 17 and the rising unemployment outside their windows, is the same as the headline finding Mass Daily News reported on earlier this week: a sharp increase in legal immigration, with at least 60,000 immigrant newcomers every year through 2030, on top of the 357,000 illegal immigrants the report admits are already in the state's workforce.

The full 35-page report is published at bostonindicators.org.

Almost 400,000 illegal immigrants are working in Massachusetts as residents say it's harder than ever to find a job — and Healey is paying to train more

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