Indicator

Economic Contributions:
Immigrant Californians are building up the fourth largest economy in the world.

Each indicator page features a series of charts, insights and analysis, case studies, resources, and related indicators.

Insights and Analyses

  • While immigrants make significant contributions to the state’s economy, valuing California’s immigrants for more than their economic contributions is key in countering untrue narratives and acknowledging, as well as valuing, their humanity. In 2021, immigrants composed 27% of the state's total population and contributed $51.4 billion to California's state and local taxes, $81.8 billion to federal taxes, and had $354 billion in spending power.

  • CA is the 4th largest economy in the world, and immigrants play a major role in the state’s economic growth. Across the state, in 2023, about 33% of all workers in the labor force were immigrants and 40% of entrepreneurs were also immigrants.

  • A 2024 analysis by Migration Policy Institute found that while the U.S.-born population ages, immigrants have been the major contributors to labor force growth over the past two decades. Foreign-born workers accounted for nearly three-quarters of all growth in the working age labor force, filling the growing number of jobs and not displacing U.S.-born workers.

  • Immigrants are more likely than U.S.-born to become entrepreneurs in the United States. In California, over 880,000 immigrants are entrepreneurs. Additionally, 2024 data from American Immigration Council’s analysis on Fortune 500 entrepreneurs shows that California has the second largest number of Fortune 500 companies founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants.

  • According to a 2023 report by the American Immigration Council, refugees in California held $20.7 billion in spending power in 2019, the highest of any state. A 2024 report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that refugees and asylees contributed more revenue to the U.S. than any benefits they received, resulting in a net fiscal benefit of $123.8 billion to U.S. state and local governments over 15 years between 2005 to 2019.

  • According to the UC Merced Community and Labor Center, employers in California contribute approximately $302 million annually to unemployment insurance on behalf of undocumented workers, even though undocumented workers are ineligible for unemployment benefits. Coalitions like the Safety Net 4 All, comprised of over 120 California organizations, are advocating for unemployment insurance coverage for undocumented workers.

  • A June 2025 report by the Bay Area Council Economic Institute and University of California, Merced, projected that mass deportation efforts would cost the state more than $275 billion in GDP output if undocumented workers were removed from the state’s workforce, with the hardest hit industries being construction and agriculture.

  • According to UC Merced’s Community and Labor Center survey, a “significant proportion” of California’s farmworkers are undocumented and nearly one in five experienced wage theft. Their analysis of 2017-2022 ACS data showed that California farmworkers have seen an increase in average annual earnings and a decrease in the average number of hours worked that is likely related to the state’s implementation of farmworker overtime protections in 2019.

  • A 2023 national survey of immigrants by KFF in partnership with the L.A. Times showed that despite the high levels of employment among immigrants, 1 in 3 immigrants reported challenges affording necessities like food, housing, and healthcare. Among low-income immigrants, 1 in 4 reported difficulties paying their bills each month and almost half reported they are “just able to pay their bills each month.”

Once migrant farmworkers, a growing number of Mexican families are now winery owners and leaders, setting trends in Napa Valley’s wine industry and throughout the state.

After migrating to the U.S., some as guest workers under the Bracero program, Mexican immigrants set their sights on one day owning wineries on the lands that they tended to and harvested, often bringing  skilled cultivation techniques and insights. Starting as seasonal migrants picking grapes and caring for the vineyard, they rooted their family and community to work fulltime. Bound together by three themes central to their experience, “heritage, opportunity, and family,” several Mexican farmworkers eventually became farm owners and have been featured by the Smithsonian for their work in strengthening and diversifying the wine industry. Though Mexican Americans make up a large proportion of the workforce, they comprise only about one percent of the nearly 4,800 wine producers in California. According to a feature by The Washington Post, some Mexican American winery owners began by purchasing or renting junkyards or empty plots, building their winery from the ground up and now setting trends in the wine industry, advocating for improved farmworker labor conditions, and preparing the next generation to support the family business.

Beyond Napa Valley, a 2021 documentary on Mexican Americans in the wine industry highlights the growing but still small number of Central Coast wineries owned by Mexican Americans. Read another article in Boom California detailing the unspoken history of the labor of diverse immigrants and Native Americans that contributed to the cultivation of California’s wine industry here.

To learn more about these families and their unique stories, read the full article here. Read a profile in Sonoma Magazine highlighting Latina winemakers and their successes and experiences navigating the wine industry here.

Photo credit: Marvin Joseph, Washington Post

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Community-based planning processes like Transformative Climate Communities (TCC) and California Green Zones can provide immigrant communities with better environmental health conditions, while also contributing to a stronger local economy.

In California, the disproportionate placement of industrial and transportation infrastructures in communities of color – including immigrant communities – have led Black, Brown, and Indigenous residents to experience greater pollution burden and environmental health hazards than white residents. This has often been the result of the exclusion of these communities from planning processes – but some programs are working to change that. The Transformative Climate Communities program, administered by the state’s Strategic Growth Council, is a place-based funding program that seeks to “empower the communities most impacted by pollution to choose their own goals, strategies, and projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and local air pollution” – and has awarded significant funding to places with large immigrant communities like South Stockton, the Inland Empire, and Barrio Logan in San Diego. A 2024 report by The Greenlining Institute and the USC Equity Research Institute found that TCC was a strong model for funding community-driven climate projects, and called out the program’s strength in catalyzing local collectives between governments, communities, and nonprofit organizations to achieve tangible progress in addressing environmental injustices.

One of the co-sponsors of the legislation that established TCC in 2016 was the California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA), whose California Green Zones program is another place-based initiative that “uses community-led solutions to transform areas overburdened by pollution.” “Green Zones” where CEJA and their partners have done such work include Fresno, where residents have asked for green spaces, housing, and transit access to replace industrial development in lower-income neighborhoods; the Southern San Joaquin Valley, where residents have formed their own multilingual advocacy organizations in Tulare and Kern Counties; and Los Angeles, where three neighborhoods with significant immigrant populations have been prioritized for improved environmental health standards by city officials because of local advocacy efforts.

To learn more about the TCC program, visit their website here. To learn more about CEJA’s Green Zones initiative, visit their website here. To read the report from The Greenlining Institute and the USC Equity Research Institute, click here.

Photo credit: Environmental Health Coalition

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Resources

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