Meatpackers: Trump Deportations Mean Cheaper Chickens and Higher Wages

President Donald Trump’s mass repatriation of illegal migrants could lower the price of chicken dinners and also raise family wages, according to AviNews.com, a poultry industry news site.

“The poultry industry heavily relies on immigrant labor. Many of these workers are undocumented, and their roles are crucial in processing plants and farms, the article noted on December 11, adding:

The loss of this labor force could force companies to increase wages to attract [American] domestic workers.

Moreover, the return of many illegal migrants to their home countries would also reduce consumer consumption of chicken products, the site noted:

Immigrants are not only a vital part of the workforce but also a significant portion of the consumer base. A reduction in the immigrant population due to deportations would decrease the number of consumers purchasing poultry products. This reduction in demand could lead to an oversupply of poultry meat, driving down prices [emphasis added] and potentially leading to financial losses for producers.

“We’re also going to lose some mouths to feed, and if they don’t consume it … the price comes down,” Len Steiner, founder and principal of Steiner Consulting Grou. He spoke at the Meat Institute’s “2025 Economic Outlook for Meat and Poultry,” on December 10, according to a report in Wattagnet.com.

The predictions of higher wages and cheaper chicken are very different from the gloom-and-doom messages from pro-migration lobbies in Washington D.C.

But lobbyists for the poultry industry will fight back because higher wages and fewer sales will cut the industry’s already-thin profits and the value of their companies’ stock on Wall Street.

So poultry companies are trying to minimize the economic hit from the loss of cheap foreign labor supplied by Alejandro Mayorkas, President Joe Biden’s pro-migration border chief.

“Broiler and turkey processors are increasingly turning to automated solutions to improve their production output and product quality, as well as combat the growing issue of labor,” WattPoultry.com reported on June 5, 2024.

For example, more meatpackers are adopting technology to raise the productivity of each worker in their slaughterhouses. The Wall Street Journal wrote in April 2024:

A $300 million, cutting-edge Tyson chicken processing plant that opened in late 2023 in Danville, Va., is designed to maximize efficiency. It can churn out 20% to 30% more chicken nuggets, strips and wings with 250 fewer people compared with an older, similar plant in Arkansas—part of the company’s $1.3 billion plan to automate more of its operations, from processing to packaging.

…

“There are a lot of efficiencies and savings and productivity involved,” said Tyson Chief Executive Donnie King.

The Journal noted the benefit for local employees, saying:

The increased emphasis on productivity and automation will also help the slaughterhouse workers regain some of the hourly wages lost since the early 1980s when the meatpackers shifted from union-dominated, high-wage, urban workforces to cheap, rural, and often illegal workforces.

The industry’s willingness to divert profits towards automation and productivity was accelerated in 2017 with the election of Donald Trump. In 2020, for example, Costco built a high-productivity poultry plant in Fremont, Neb., that used technology developed in Iceland.

Newer technology combines electronic eyes, flexible arms, and pick-and-pack tripods to reduce employee injuries and accelerate productivity. Many other countries — such as China and Germany — are investing more in new meatpacking technology

Moreover, the U.S. economy has sidelined millions of working-age men and women, especially outside the main cities.  Some can be rehabilitated, and trained for work in the poultry business — especially if they are working with other Americans.

In February, Steve Camarota, a researcher at the Center for Immigration Studies, wrote:

Today, the labor force participation rate of US-born men without a bachelor’s (ages 18 to 64) stands at 75.6% — still below the 76.3% rate it was in the fourth quarter of 2019.

And both those figures are far below the 80.6% rate in 2006 and 82.6% in 2000.

Back in the 1960s, nearly 90% of these men were in the labor force.

The sidelined Americans are also costly because they often receive welfare and state aid.

However, many employers prefer to hire submissive and cheap migrants.

In September, the Wall Street Journal described housing conditions for Haitians at a meatpacking plant in Greeley, Colorado:

A [company] human-resources supervisor arranged for some of the immigrant workers to stay at the Rainbow Motel, a mile down the road from the plant, where they lived for weeks. They slept on the floor, as many as eight to a room, and cooked meals on hot plates on the carpet. [The company] footed the bill.

The supervisor, himself an immigrant from the African nation of Benin, set up others to stay in a five-bedroom, two-bathroom unit he had leased in a house in town. There, too, they slept on floors. At one point, 30 or more people were living there, workers said. When the power went out in the winter, they cooked in their coats. They were charged $60 a week in rent.

“Workers worried that if they complained, they would lose their jobs,” the report added.