Sugar‑High Growth from Illegal Labor

Treat 2020–2025 gains in employment and GDP as temporarily inflated by a surge of unauthorized workers that let firms expand without investing in productivity or raising wages. As enforcement reduces this labor pool, headline growth slows, but that reflects normalization. Analysts should report economy‑wide indicators with and without the illegal‑labor contribution to judge underlying performance. — This reframes macro narratives and wage debates by distinguishing transient, enforcement‑sensitive boosts from the legal economy’s true trajectory.