The burst of foreign interest in US jobs following the Covid-19 pandemic has all but vanished, a shift that threatens to exacerbate labor shortages in industries such as health care.The share of clicks on US job listings coming from people outside the country was almost 30% lower in March than at its August 2023 peak, according to a report Tuesday from the Indeed Hiring Lab.
The gauge, which Indeed says can foreshadow actual migration flows, has now slipped to its March 2019 reading, essentially erasing the post-pandemic boom. White-collar occupations bore the brunt as interest from science, technology, engineering and mathematics professionals fell the fastest, the report showed.
This retreat among highly skilled professionals is particularly notable because those occupations in the US generate the most interest from foreigners.Indeed’s researchers said the decline may stem from “a significant rise in anti-immigrant rhetoric” during the 2024 presidential campaign as well as new immigration policies from President Donald Trump. Companies are also pressing to expand the annual quota of H-1B visas needed to recruit specialized talent.“If flagging foreign interest in US jobs begins to translate into lower actual immigration, productivity and economic growth could suffer, labor shortages could become more pronounced, and inflation could rise,” Indeed researchers wrote in the report.Already, an aging native-born workforce and slowing population growth have pushed businesses to lean harder on immigrant labor. Immigrants accounted for one in five US workers as of March — substantially above pre-pandemic levels — according to Labor Department data. Those workers helped fill nearly 30% of all construction jobs, and they make up about 26% of physicians and surgeons and roughly 40% of home health-care aides, the report said.“Probably more severe impact in terms of the economy overall is going to be in the health-care sector,” said Allison Shrivastava, economist at Indeed Hiring Lab, the research arm of the employment website. “Health care is primarily responsible for adding jobs to the economy right now. It’s already an issue that exists, and this is just going to make it worse.”The slide, however, isn’t confined to the US.Foreign clicks on job ads in Canada and Australia also surged after Covid and have since tapered off amid cooler economies and stricter immigration policies.“After the pandemic, more people may have felt the grass was greener elsewhere, pushing up interest in foreign work,” the report said. “But by late 2024, the rise of immigrant-skeptic political parties worldwide may have helped quickly dampen that interest.”Canada’s increase faded after it began measures to curb the number of non-permanent residents. Australia, despite its recent drop, still posts a hefty net gain, coinciding with the country’s increased cap for permanent migrants in 2022, according to the report.Indeed tracks job clicks from candidates in 254 countries and territories using their IP addresses, which indicate their likely geographic locations.
