Waller: likely that employment "actually shrank" in May, June, and July

Waller: Payroll jobs likely declined May-July "After accounting for the revisions that will be coming at some point... the data are likely to indicate that employment actually shrank—was negative—over those three months [May, June, and July]." www.youtube.com/live/EoHz0l3...

Worth watching: Incremental +300K international students per year would be a +40% increase over current student visa levels. Potentially a big deal for major city apartment demand, and a bailout of US universities at risk from a declining population of US high school seniors.

Our internal data shows households moving between metro areas spiked in 2021 and has fallen by 29% since. Long-distance moves are rare in 2025.

To add to this: The foreign-born sample in CPS is -12% since last August. Nativity is not part of population controls, so assuming the foreign-born population didn't drop 12%, weighted results will show declining numbers of immigrants. So looks like fewer immigrant workers. Don't use CPS for this.

Two charts on shifting housing demand: 1) Homeowners declining in 2Q, first in 9 years 2) Renters continue surging, up +1.6M since 2023 What happens next depends on homebuilder margins, SFR buyers, land sellers, ICE staffing/deportations, job growth, life expectancy, & rates, to name a few.

Opening move to a citizenship question in the 2030 Census? One study shows that asking about citizenship would have caused 4.2 million Hispanics to be "missed" in the 2010 count. (That'd be almost 6 million with today's larger Hispanic population.)

Native born employment and population may appear higher because… people are now self reporting that they were born in the US rather than abroad.

Immigrants are leaving the US workforce in very large numbers. Remittance payments US→MX plummeting, down 2+ million from a year ago. Biggest decline in >30 years - a period that includes a homebuilding depression and a 100-year financial crisis.

Affordability is rerouting housing growth. @conorsen.bsky.social of @opinion.bloomberg.com cites research from @ericfinnigan.jbrec.com and Chris Porter of @jbrec.com on migration shifts from Austin to San Antonio and beyond. www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Labor costs aren't currently going up for homebuilders because we're in a homebuilding recession. I'm thinking about the next cycle, and the 1.4M new homes needed every year to keep up with household growth. Watch out for "hockey stick"-shaped labor cost inflation in the next cycle.

ICE raids are hitting Western Union's US→Mexico money-sending business. More evidence that immigration enforcement is disrupting the construction industry (and others). US→Mexico is the largest remittance channel globally ($60B+ annually). Western Union leads in transaction volume.

We called out the importance of shorter-distance, affordability-driven migration back in March 2024, highlighting 3 other markets - Austin, Orlando, and Denver. jbrec.com/insights/3-m...

When resale housing warms back up, I believe this story is a taste of what's coming. Affordability-driven migration will create new winners & losers. It'll be fascinating to watch. That said, Atlanta has begun looking better in our internal migration data (through May 2025).

WILDLY different from early 2010s when millennials flocked to coastal mega-cities to work in tech and media. Geography of real estate and housing is undergoing similar shifts.

Homebuilders and remodeling contractors in our surveys have let us know about ICE raids' effect on residential construction over the past few months. Worth keeping an eye on this, as the BBB includes $170 billion in funding for larger-scale deportations.

ICE arrests hit over 1,000 per day in June. Today's Fed Beige Book mentions 5 ways this is impacting companies and consumers (🧵)

Why is Gen Z different? Important context here... And in some ways, this probably understates the inflation effect by leaving out student loan burdens. Millennials took out a lot of student debt too, but could refi during ZIRP.

On Sumitomo Forestry's $29M acquisition of Teal Jones Louisiana Holdings: "Sumitomo is now positioned to control the supply of a key input (Southern Yellow Pine lumber) from forest to frame." www.thebuildersdaily.com/sumitomos-ti...

This matches a chart we've been showing clients this year, namely that the immigrant surge filled up vacant rentals, mostly in small apartment buildings.

College town vs. Retirement community: Madison County, ID (home of 17,000 BYU-Idaho students) and Sumter County, FL (aka The Villages) show the extreme demographic differences within the US.

99.6% of the 2024 increase in Hispanic population experiencing homelessness were counted as "sheltered." NYC and Chicago put migrants in hotels, just like Denver www.npr.org/2023/11/08/1...

Florida in-migration drying up: Household move-ins from other states just hit their lowest monthly level since at least 2018. Adds context to housing weakness throughout much of Florida.

Why are teen pregnancies so rare today? Turns out kids don't want kids of their own (yet).

For the first time in the US, more babies are now born to moms 40–44 than under 20. This marks 2 historical shifts for the US, plummeting teen pregnancy and gradually rising fertility for older women.

10-year high unemployment for recent college grads. Some segments of housing performing like a mild recession already. Means more delayed household formation, living with parents/roommates longer.

Bloomberg today covering San Francisco's early-stage revival: - Streets cleaner/busier - Better drug enforcement - City employees back in office 4 days/week - AI boom luring tech workers back from Miami/Austin - More office leased in 4Q than vacated (1st since 2020)

Interesting to think through possible 2nd order effects of shrinking TAM for universities over the next 10+ years "At all of the four Ivies reporting overall acceptance rates, the rate has increased slightly this year compared to last year." www.crimsoneducation.org/us/blog/ivy-...

Universities face an increasingly tough demographic backdrop ahead. America's largest-ever birth cohort (4.3 million in 2007) turns 18 this year. An unavoidable decline in high school seniors is here. Good article yesterday on the potential future of small college towns www.wsj.com/us-news/educ...

For all the news on deportations and immigration enforcement, actual ICE arrests averaged ~600 per day in February and March. Arrests have doubled over the past 3 months, but the agency is falling short of the 1,800-per-day quota set on January 28th.

New details emerge on how the administration wants to spend $80 billion to ramp up larger-scale deportations: Larger detention facilities, more agents, new technology, expanded courts/prosecutions, etc. List courtesy of @adamisacson.com, who notes these items add up to $79.52 billion.

The longer I try to reconcile this survey, the more I believe it's a "for you, not for me" dynamic: boomers and now Gen X want more grandkids, not that couples want more kids in the house. Contrary to preference surveys, the data show actual families with kids are smaller and rarer.

3.6 million babies born in the US in 2024 — same as 1983, despite a population increase of +108 million people. How we build housing for families is undergoing a fundamental shift, rather than a temporary change. I wrote about it (and made some fun charts) here: jbrec.com/insights/lif...

Watching initial claims over the coming weeks. These SMBs aren't doing furloughs or severance, so the layoffs should show up in unemployment claims quicker than government or tech layoffs, e.g.

Be sure to follow Ian's Mappy Monday updates!

A key barrier to large-scale deportations just fell: The IRS "has agreed to help homeland security officials find immigrants they are trying to deport... ICE officials can ask the I.R.S. for information about people who have been ordered to leave." www.nytimes.com/2025/04/08/u...

All housing-related stocks I see are down after-hours except MasterBrand (kitchen cabinet manufacturer), which is up +5%.

Some evidence that immigration/deportation policy is hitting part of the rental market: "Our apartment occupancy is shrinking as undocumented immigrants proactively leave to avoid losing their families and possessions... we're having to lower rents to fill units." h/t @weisenthal.bsky.social

Interesting stat from our consumer sentiment survey: the % renters expecting to buy their NEXT home fell again. In other words, fewer renters expect to be owners soon. As mentioned on several REIT earnings calls over the past year, this is a key driver of high tenant retention rates. $EQR

Important revisions in yesterday's Census release: Several large metros areas, including New York and the Bay Area metros, grew in 2023 (instead of declined) due big upward revisions to its count of immigrants. This corrects the record on Census's undercounting of the 2022-2023 immigration surge.

Many such cases... Population projections aside, we have lower birth rates today (in part) BECAUSE most of us older Millennials have option-rich — i.e., wealthy — lives that many of our Baby Boomer parents in their 20s didn't have yet.

Societal shifts affecting US demographics and long-term population growth... US births 2024 by mom's age Under 35: 2,85M (lowest since before WW2) 35+: 773K (highest ever) US population projections now depend on older mothers offsetting declining younger births + immigration.

The long-term demographic tailwind for US housing demand is changing – a lot or a little, depending on your focus – due to 30+ new immigration/border/deportation policies since Jan. 20. We're updating long-term housing demand forecasts today – going out to clients next week.

Generation Beta could find themselves quite valuable to companies, entering the 2050 workforce. With 25-year-olds declining -13% by 2050, employers may find themselves competing for a smaller pool of entry-level talent. "A New Generation Is Here. Its Name Is Already an Insult." on.wsj.com/3DfH4tT

Update: The budget resolution passed, removing a key barrier for funding for large-scale deportations and additional border security. h/t @nycsouthpaw.bsky.social

The House budget resolution now in voting contains $300 billion for increasing border security and deportations. That would answer the biggest question I've had about mass deportations - how to pay for them? Here's a slide I presented at a housing conference in November, 9 days post election:

Fort Myers net migration recovery: For the 1st time since Hurricane Ian, more households are moving IN to Fort Myers than moving OUT. It was a full 2-year recovery after Hurricane Ian.

Already seeing housing impact from DOGE... DC-area homebuilder: "We already had 2 contracts cancel because one of the couple's jobs had been eliminated." Our DC-area market expert Jeff Kottmeier wrote up a new article on the topic here: jbrec.com/insights/gov...

Illegal southern border crossings fell again in January, hitting "nearly 30K", the lowest level since May 2020. Stunning turnaround from 250K in December 2023. I'll post more in future weeks as the effects of new border policies and enforcement shows up in the data. Source: x.com/camiloreport...