We tore out our own backup generator

A total of 4.18 million Americans turned 65 last year, the highest number ever recorded in a single year. They worked, paid in, and earned their retirement. They’re also gone, and there aren’t enough workers left to replace them.

That’s the first problem, and it isn’t hypothetical.

The second: The U.S. fertility rate last year was 1.6 births per woman. Replacement rate is 2.1. We’ve been below that line for decades, and by 2033 the population starts shrinking outright.

There used to be an answer to both: immigration. Immigrants filled the gap for years. They work, pay taxes, buy homes, start businesses and raise children who become the next generation of workers. Then, between 2024 and 2025, net migration dropped 77 percent because of policy changes. That’s the third problem, and it’s the one we did to ourselves.

We tore out the backup generator while the lights were already flickering.

Now all three are moving the wrong direction at once. Boomers are retiring. Births are too low. Immigration has stalled. Each one alone is manageable. Together, they feed each other: fewer workers shrink the economy, a smaller economy shrinks opportunity, less opportunity makes starting a family harder, and fewer families mean fewer future workers. The loop closes on itself.

Start with retirement. Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system: today’s workers fund today’s retirees. When the program launched, there were nearly 160 covered workers for every retiree, making it easy to fund. That number has dropped to just under three covered workers per retiree. In 10 years, it’ll be barely two workers per retiree. The trust fund is on track to run dry by 2033. If you’re 55 today, it disappears before you collect what you’ve paid into it for three decades. That’s not a projection. That’s the current path.

Now fertility. Women aren’t opting out of having kids because their values changed. They’re doing the math and it doesn’t add up. Paid childcare, parental leave and affordable housing all raise birth rates where they’ve been tried, but they’re expensive and the return takes 18 years to show up. Today’s baby is 2043’s worker. Worth doing. Won’t save the next decade.

Which leaves immigration, the one force that touches both problems at once and works inside five years instead of 18. Immigrants participate in the labor force at higher rates than native-born Americans. They pay into Social Security today, not in 2043. They start businesses at disproportionate rates. The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco found that without immigration, the U.S. working-age population would have started shrinking in 2012, not 2025. We’ve been running on borrowed time for over a decade already.

Brookings estimates the population declines by 7 million by 2040 without immigration. Cato puts a number on what that costs: public debt at all levels reaching at least 205 percent of GDP, nearly double its 2023 level.

This is the part that gets lost in the politics. Immigration isn’t competing with American workers for a shrinking number of jobs. It’s the thing keeping Social Security solvent for the retirees already here, and the thing keeping the workforce large enough to support the babies not yet born. It is retirement policy. It is fertility policy. It just doesn’t get talked about as either.

Both parties avoid saying this plainly. Democrats argue about the ethics of ICE raids and skip the economics of why more immigration helps. Republicans have turned immigration into the villain in a story about economic pain that immigration would actually solve. The gap between the politics and the math has never been wider.

Here’s the version where nothing changes: retirees keep leaving at 65, births stay flat, and immigration stays closed. In that version, there’s exactly one lever left. Everyone works longer. Not because retirement wasn’t earned. Because the system that funds it needs more people paying in, and we walked away from the fastest way to get them.

Three problems. One fix that actually lands in time to matter.

The question was never whether we can afford more immigration. It’s whether we can keep affording the alternative.

Jaime Raul Zepeda is the Executive Vice President and Principal Consultant at Best Companies Group, a leader in employee experience and work culture research for small and medium businesses in America. Connect with him on LinkedIn or send him an email at [email protected].