Immigration raids linked to significant California job losses, analysis finds

By Suhauna Hussain, Los Angeles Times

Each month, Edward Flores crunches the numbers. And each month he grows more and more certain of the stark impact of federal immigration raids on California’s economy.

Flores found that the number of people reporting private sector employment in California in late May and early June fell by 3.1% — a drop so significant it was exceeded in recent memory only by the employment downturn during the COVID-19 lockdown.

The associate professor of sociology and faculty director of the UC Merced labor center based his analysis on U.S. census data from those months and published his findings over the summer.

Flores has repeated the analysis for each month since June, with the exception of October, when the federal government shut down and for the first time in some 50 years did not collect these data.

The employment decline grew further, with a 4.9% decrease in the first week of July — 742,492 fewer workers.

Numbers somewhat bounced back in August, after a U.S. district judge temporarily banned roving patrols of immigration agents from stopping people based on the color of their skin, language spoken or vocation. But from May to September, private sector ...