Where do immigrant workers come from and how have numbers changed?

In 2021, over 60% of immigrant workers who came to the US arrived from North America. Of those immigrants, nearly 90.4% came from Mexico. Asia was the continent with the next highest number of workers immigrating to the US, accounting for about 22%, followed by Europe (9%), Africa (4%), and South America (3%). The smallest number of immigrant workers came from Oceania or had unknown nationalities, constituting just over 1% of the total.

How many immigrants come to the US for work?

Nearly 42% of immigrants came to the US to join the workforce. Since 2006, work opportunities have been the most common reason people immigrate to the US.

While the percentage of people immigrating to the US for work was similar in 2021 compared to 15 years earlier, the total number of immigrant workers coming to the US decreased between 2006 and 2021. In 2006, 841,642 people immigrated to the US for work. This number steadily increased until 2016, when it peaked at 1.1 million immigrant workers. In 2021, this number dropped to 638,551.