No, immigration isn’t raising your rent

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In the world according to Sen. JD Vance, immigrants are the root of all evil. During this week’s vice presidential debate with Gov. Tim Walz, he argued that they’re responsible for rising housing prices.

Economists were quick to point out that his “evidence” was an out-of-context quote from a speech from one Federal Reserve official. Still, immigrants are people, and people need housing. So could the recent rise in immigration be a major factor in the recent surge in housing costs?

There are multiple reasons to say no; one of them is timing. Basically, most of the surge in rents took place in 2021, and a big jump in immigration began in 2022. Rents shot up as we came out of the pandemic slump; the big rise in immigration came later, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates of net immigration in recent years, along with Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates of rent increases for new tenants.

So what caused surging rents? There are longer-term issues, mainly a failure to build enough housing. But the most likely immediate cause of zooming rents was Zoom — that is, the rise in remote work. People working from home, on average, sought more home to work from. I know that this explanation is unsatisfying for many people because it doesn’t have any obvious villains. But it’s the best story we have.

Paul Krugman has been a columnist for the New York Times since 1999. He is distinguished professor in the Graduate Center Economics Ph.D. program and distinguished scholar at the Luxembourg Income Study Center at the City University of New York. In addition, he is professor emeritus of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School. In 2008, he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade theory.