Immigration could be a solution to Utah's 'wicked' demographic woes, researchers say

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah is still one of the youngest states and has some of the highest fertility rates in the country. But that trend is going in the opposite direction with demographers projecting smaller household sizes and an older median age. Congress is also projecting more deaths than births come 2030.

That "demographic imbalance" is a problem that Robin Fretwell Wilson, a family and health law professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said "is wicked in a way that even the culture wars are not." And migration could help solve it, she said during a Sutherland Institute roundtable on Wednesday.

Fewer births and an older population would have substantial effects for the economy and the federal budget. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the population served by Social Security is projected to increase from 349 million people this year to 364 million in 2056.

Over the next 30 years, the rate of population growth will also slow down, dipping from an average of 0.3% a year to 0.1% from 2037 to 2056. That last year is when the total population is projected to stop growing and start to shrink.

"Net immigration (the number of people who migrate to the United States minus the number who leave) is projected to become an increasingly important source of population growth in the coming years, as declining fertility rates cause the annual number of deaths to exceed the annual number of births starting in 2030," the Congressional Budget Office's website says.

Olivia Whiteley, director of strategy for Reliable Refuge, said during the event that the United States has long relied on international migration to sustain its population, secure its workforce competitiveness and strengthen its care economy. However, recent immigration policy changes have shrunk the number of international admissions to the country.

Net international migration peaked at 2.7 million in 2024, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, then declined by 48% to 1.3 million in 2025, and is expected to decline even further in 2026 to about 321,000.

Nearly 21% of Utah's population growth was due to international migration from 2024 to 2025, Whiteley said, and both domestic and international migration is becoming a driving force behind Utah's population growth.

"Not only do immigrants fund services for American retirees, they fill critical labor gaps with younger workers, often gaps caused by rates of older retiring workers. Seventy-seven percent of America's foreign-born population is within the ages of 16 to 64, while only 60% of the U.S. born population is of working age," Whiteley said, citing data from the American Immigration Council's analysis of a 2023 survey.

"Labor-intensive industries with high rates of retirees — agriculture, construction, STEM, transportation — rely increasingly on immigrant labor," she said. "Care work, an industry that will only grow in demand as America's population ages, also depends heavily on immigrant labor."

During 2023, immigrants were estimated to have paid about $652 billion in taxes, including $31.2 billion paid by refugees, in combined federal, state and local taxes.

For decades, Utah had built the capacity to resettle more than 1,000 refugees in the state each year, but this year only welcomed 152, Whiteley said.

"While the U.S. welcomes refugees in an effort to sustain American values, freedom, liberty, democracy, the refugee program is as much a demographic and an economic program as it is a humanitarian one; America's return on investment in refugee resettlement is proven," she said, citing a 2024 study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that found that refugees and asylees contributed $123.8 in revenue over what they cost in expenditures by the government in a 15-year period.

"The solution is bipartisan congressional intervention, codification of a refugee floor shaped by state input, which would guarantee Utah receive a baseline number of refugee admissions each year," she added. "Utah has already led the country in codifying the state's administration of the refugee program. Now Utah leaders can call for an operational refugee minimum."

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