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The number of immigrant workers in the United States is declining. According to preliminary Census Bureau data analyzed by the Pew Research Center, more than 1.2 million immigrants left the labor force from January to June 2025. Per the report, 51.9 million immigrants lived in the U.S. as of June, down from a record high of 53.3 million (15.8% of the population) in January. The report comes as immigration policies have evolved quickly under President Donald Trump. The president ran his 2024 campaign on the promise to deport illegal immigrants. Since January, aggressive Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids have swept the nation. According to the latest detention management data, 61,226 people are being held in ICE detention centers. While Trump had vowed to focus on deporting violent criminals, the data shows that at least 70% have no convictions. Stephanie Kramer, senior Pew researcher, said immigrants make up around 20% of the workforce in the U.S. “It’s unclear how much of the decline we’ve seen since January is due to voluntary departures to pursue other opportunities or avoid deportation, removals, underreporting, or other technical issues,” Kramer said, per AP News. “However, we don’t believe that the preliminary numbers indicating net-negative migration are so far off that the decline isn’t real.” Recent reports say deportations are up to the highest rate in 10 years, with at least 200,000 people deported so far. As ICE raids continue, many immigrants who do not have legal status have become afraid to leave their homes, leaving industries that rely most heavily on immigrant workerslike restaurants, construction, and farmingshort-staffed. In response to reports that businesses supplying the country’s food were being threatened, Trump in June directed ICE to pause arrests at farms, restaurants, and hotels. Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, longtime workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace, Trump wrote on Truth Social. In many cases, the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming! Immigrant workers arent the only ones leaving the workforce. Black employment has dropped as well. According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report from August 1, 7.2% of Black Americans are unemployed compared with 4.2% of the general population. This is almost a 1% increase from the previous year, when 6.3% were unemployed. In addition, a record number of women have left the nation’s workforce this year. According to a National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) review of monthly releases from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, since January a net 338,000 women have left the labor force. During the same period, there was a net gain of 183,000 men in the labor force.
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E-Commerce
While some wonder how the chicken crosses the road, Raising Cane’s is figuring out just how chicken fingers can cross the pond. The nation’s fast-growing restaurant chain is set to open its first U.K. location next year. Arriving in London’s West End in late 2026, Raising Cane’s flagship U.K. location will mark the privately held company’s first non-franchise international expansion and its first European foray, with an undisclosed number of U.K. locations to follow. “Our vision is to grow restaurants all over the world and to be the brand that is known for craveable chicken-finger meals and be really, really good at it,” Raising Cane’s co-CEO and COO AJ Kumaran told Fast Company ahead of the announcement. Beyond just chicken fingers and the restaurant’s fan-favored limited menu, Raising Cane’s is rapidly growing, with sales upward of $5.1 billion last year, marking world domination as an understandable next step. While the company debuted franchised stores in the Middle East in 2015, the U.K. expansion marks its first fully company-operated international venture. Coop d’état This year, Raising Cane’s became the second-fastest growing restaurant chain in the United States, with plans to open nearly 100 new locations this year on top of last year’s record-breaking 118 new spots. By the end of the year, the chain expects a total of 1,000 locations to be open, with Kumaran ambitiously looking for it to become a top 10 U.S. restaurant brand by the end of the decade. In its Dallas office, the company is planning on quadrupling in size ahead of its move to a new support office in nearby Plano, Texas, next year. “We like to beat our own milestones and do better than what we’ve done before,” Kumaran, who joined the company in 2014, says. “To grow restaurants all over the world has been our vision since day one of our existence.” Chicken fingers come to London While details on the store’s design are yet to be released, Cane’s flagship U.K. location will open at 21-22 Coventry St., between Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square, in a mid-20th-century commercial building in the city’s storied theater district. Like all other Cane’s locations, the restaurant’s inside decorations will feature local graphics that represent the location’s community. For instance, in U.S. stores, restaurants tend to feature local iconography, such as the team colors of the town’s high school. For its Times Square location in New York City, the design team included homages to Elvis Presley, whose first movie premiered on-site. “We wanted to pay homage to that, and so we incorporated that into the design,” Kuraman explained. “Likewise, we are in the process of understanding what that looks like in London and specifically in these upcoming locations.” The research process to make each store design unique begins with hiring local leaders to spearhead community authenticity, developing the restaurant’s “ethos.” “We study every location that we go into,” Kuraman says. “We go to the utmost details about finding the history on what existed there, what the city is known for, what’s the relevance of the building that we’re walking into.” As part of the expansion, the chicken-finger company is looking to set up a home base in London with its own local team. It’s also hiring for executive roles in the U.S. as part of its broader expansion plans. Still, one thing is set to remain the same: the cult-favorite menu. “We want to be chicken finger experts. It is our chicken fingers, our sauce, our freshly brewed tea that is custom-formulated for us, and a freshly squeezed lemonade that is made in our restaurants by our crew members multiple times a day. It’s in the fries and the toast and the coleslaw,” Kumaran added. “This is it. We’re not planning on changing anything.”
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E-Commerce
Cultivated meatmeat grown from cells, not from whole animalsisnt yet a widespread option in grocery stores or restaurants. The innovation, which involves growing meat from real animal cells without raising or slaughtering any animals, is still relatively rare. But already, Texas lawmakers have decided to ban it. Now, two cultivated meat companies are fighting back with a federal lawsuit that challenges the ban. The Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public interest law firm, along with cultivated meat startups Wildtype and Upside Foods, argue that the Texas law is an unconstitutional move to protect the agriculture industry from competition. This law has nothing to do with protecting public health and safety and everything to do with protecting conventional agriculture from innovative out-of-state competition, Institute for Justice senior attorney Paul Sherman said in a press conference on Wednesday. (The U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration have approved both Upside’s and Wildtypes cultivated meat as safe.) How do we know that? Sherman continued. Because the sponsors of the bill made absolutely no secret of it. Repeatedly in committee hearings and on the floor of the Texas House, they said that the purpose of this law is to protect Texas’s agricultural industry. But that is not a legitimate use of government power.” Cultivated meat has been offered in only one Texas restaurant. Otoko, a sushi restaurant in Austin, began serving Wildtype salmon this summer. But once the ban went into effect, the restaurant stopped selling it. By limiting what Texans can eat, the companies involved in the lawsuit say the ban is also a slippery slope toward handing over personal choices to the government. Lawsuits against cultivated meat Cultivated meat has faced lawsuits before. In 2024, Florida became the first state to ban cultivated meat, with Alabama quickly following suit. This year, lab-grown meat bans passed in Indiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, and Texas. (Cultivated meat bans have also been considered in a handful of other states, including Georgia and Wyoming.) Some bans dont bar lab-grown meat forever. The Indiana and Texas lawsuits prohibit the sale of cultivated meat for two years. The Texas bill, SB 261, was signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott in June and went into effect on September 1. It imposes fines of up to $25,000 a day and even jail time for selling cultivated meat. Texas is the largest beef-producing state in the country, with some 4 million beef cattle. Sid Miller, the states agriculture commissioner, applauded the ban, saying in a statement that it was a massive win for Texas ranchers, producers, and consumers.” He added: “Its plain cowboy logic that we must safeguard our real, authentic meat industry from synthetic alternatives. Cultivated meat companies fight back To the companies that make this cultivated meat, these bans are clearly a way to protect the meat and ranching industry from competition. Cultivated meat has been a burgeoning industry for about a decade, but it only recently received regulatory approval in the U.S. Upside Foods, which makes cultivated chicken, was the first to get that approval back in 2023. Wildtype, which makes cultivated salmon, received approval in 2025. To make cultivated meat, these companies grow the cellswhether from chickens or salmonin big cultivators, usually with a blend of ingredients like amino acids and sugars. Wildtype CEO Justin Kolbeck likened the process to brewing beer. (Though cultivated meat has also been called lab-grown meat, Uma Valeti, CEO and founder of Upside Foods, has contested that label. Its not made in a lab, he has said, but in a production facility like any other food.) These companies are offering consumers a choice, they sayespecially for people who may not want to switch to plant-based meats but who still want to curb their meat consumption as a way to benefit the climate. The lawsuit filed against the Texas ban challenges it under two constitutional provisions: the Commerce Clause, which prohibits states from impairing interstate commerce, and the Supremacy Clause, which bars states from enacting laws that conflict with federal laws. The Poultry Products Inspection Act, for example, says states cannot enact requirements on ingredients in poultry products, or on the facilities and operations that produce them. For the same reason California cannot ban Texas beef in California, Texas cannot ban salmon or chicken from California, Valeti said in a statement. Texans deserve the freedom to decide for themselves what to eat without politicians choosing for them. Wildtype’s Kolbeck also noted during the press conference that when it comes to seafood, America needs more stateside production. More than 80% of seafood on Americans plates is imported, and in April, the Trump administration issued an executive order to restore American seafood competitiveness. [We] are an American small business trying to do exactly what this executive order envisions, he said. In 2024, the Institute for Justice also filed a lawsuit in Florida, with Upside Foods, challenging that states cultivated-meat ban. In April, a judge denied the state’s attempt to dismiss the lawsuit, so it will move forward to trial court. The Texas lawsuit asks the district court to issue a preliminary injunction to block the ban, which would allow Wildtype and Upside to continue to make their cultivated meat available to Texans while the case continues.
Category:
E-Commerce
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