Senior living operators once pinned their hopes on an influx of workers via new immigration to help meet a surge of demand in the years ahead. In 2025, those hopes seem all but dashed.
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has taken a hard line to new immigration, with aspirations to further ramp up its rate of deportations in the future. The administration has taken actions to detain and deport immigrants seeking residency, even going so far as to raid construction sites and other businesses. Recently, the U.S. State Department announced plans to open an “Office of Remigration” as part of those efforts.
All of that has significantly dimmed the prospect of immigrant workers filling jobs in senior living. Argentum President James Balda previously told Senior Housing News that, given recent moves, he doesn’t see a “strong appetite at this point for broad-based immigration reform” in the government.
But that begs a larger question: If the senior living industry can’t count on an influx of new immigration, how will it fill the thousands of jobs that need workers in the years ahead? The pool of potential workers is already “limited” given the need for passion and special skills, according to Jeanna Delgado, vice president of government affairs for the American Seniors Housing Association.
“It’s a different kind of individual,” Delgado told Senior Housing News.
In the meantime, there are older, tested recruiting and retention strategies that operators believe will help soften the blow to their workforces. Alexandria, Virginia-based Goodwin Living, for example, has established an internship program through which it is creating a pipeline of future staff members. Of the 50 interns the nonprofit had last year, 15 have joined the organization on a part-time or full-time basis, according to President and CEO Rob Liebreich.
Other operators are recruiting older workers, particularly those aged 50 and up who have retired and are looking for part-time work, to help fill vacant frontline positions that require little training during peak hours, such as Freehold, New Jersey-based Distinctive Living.
“You don’t need to be a nurse to make a bed. You don’t need to be a CNA to make a bed,” CEO Joe Jedlowski said.
But even with these efforts, there are still real questions about the future of the senior living workforce and operators’ ability to meet the surge of demand in the years ahead without new workers via immigration.
‘Stakes could not be higher’
The senior living industry is expected to add 292,500 new jobs between 2021 and 2040 to keep up with demand, according to Argentum. Operators also must fill an additional 2.7 million job openings due to employees leaving their roles in that time span.
In addition to Argentum, industry associations including LeadingAge and the AHCA/NCAL have sounded the alarm over the Trump administration’s recent immigration moves.
In late April, LeadingAge blasted the actions of U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem as causing “immediate uncertainty and concern for employers and workers alike.” The industry association on May 30 again reissued its statement in response to a new Supreme Court decision allowing the Trump administration to revoke the temporary legal status of more than 500,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
According to LeadingAge President Katie Smith Sloan, foreign-born workers with legal status, including parolees and TPS holders from Haiti and Venezuela, “play a meaningful role” in senior living, along with nursing homes, home health, home care and hospice companies.
“The stakes could not be higher,” Sloan said. “Absent significant policy intervention, we can be certain today’s workforce shortage will intensify as the gap between need and capacity widens with each passing year.”
Smith Sloan added: “Longstanding relationships with staff contribute directly to residents’ emotional wellbeing and sense of security. Some of the affected employees have been in their roles for a decade or more … the sudden loss of these individuals risks unsettling care routines, diminishing quality of care, and causing distress among residents who depend on familiar, stable support in their daily lives.”
Similarly, AHCA/NCAL stated in April that it “has long supported immigration reform as one of many solutions to help strengthen the long term care workforce,” and urged Congress to “expand and expedite opportunities for international health care workers who wish to live and work in the United States.”
Already, senior living operators are worrying about – and feeling – the ramifications of deportations and the lack of immigration reform. Goodwin Living employs 65 workers under temporary protected status or humanitarian parole, and Liebrech said “it is incredulous to us that law-abiding, tax-paying and contributing legal workers are being put at risk.”
“This reality will only grow given the size of the baby boomer generation now in retirement age, the fact that America’s population is aging and our birth rates are dropping,” he said in conjunction with LeadingAge’s most recent statement. “The math tells a grim story: America does not have the replacement population we need to care for our country’s aging population today – or for the coming two decades.”
Similarly, the looming Aug. 4 termination of the TPS program imperils the status of 8% of the workforce at Toby & Leon Cooperman Sinai Residences, in Boca Raton, Florida, according to President and CEO Rachel Blumberg.
“They’ve shared with me, often tearfully, what awaits them next,” Blumberg said in a statement published by LeadingAge. “This is not an isolated issue. The entire ecosystem of South Florida’s workforce is under threat.”
She added that more than half of the TPS recipients facing deportation reside in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach Counties alone.
“These are not just workers in senior living—they are stocking shelves at the grocery store, pumping gas, staffing hotels, and cleaning country clubs. They hold the essential, often invisible jobs that keep our economy and communities running,” she said.
Operators fall back to internships, widening recruitment pools
Senior living operators previously counting on immigration to help bolster their workforces now must rely on other tactics to bring in new workers. Many are falling back to strategies like offering internships and casting a wider net for recruits to make
Goodwin Living employs a team of about 50 interns as part of a program it launched a year and a half ago. Distinctive Living has also partnered with high schools and colleges to bring new interns aboard.
“We are really focusing on that career path with our teams,” Jedlowski said.
In April, the Trump administration set a goal to add an additional 1 million apprenticeships annually, a move that could benefit professional internships if the administration actually follows through on the plan, industry associations have said.
Since 2020, Argentum has trained an estimated 6,700 individuals through the program enacted during Trump’s first term, which was carried through the Biden administration, according to Delgado.
“If there’s a program available and the resources are there, I think that that’s a positive sign,” Delgado said.
ASHA is currently working alongside Congressman Lloyd Smucker (R-Penn.) to create an essential worker visa for caregivers and other workers that don’t have college degrees, according to Delgado.
Senior living operators also are widening their recruitment pools to include a wider age range of potential workers. Roughly 40% of Goodwin Living’s total workforce is age 50 or older.
Goodwin has attracted and retained these workers partly by supporting educational pursuits. The operator doles out as much as $5,250 per year that workers can use to pay for higher education. Today Liebrech said between 80 and 100 staff are taking advantage of the program at any given time.
Distinctive recruits older workers through schools and local groups close to its communities. Those workers can help fill vacant positions for a few hours per week. Jedlowski added older workers are typically more flexible and take less desirable hours than their younger counterparts.
Senior living operators struggled with workers leaving their jobs or “quiet quitting” years ago in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. Some of those workers have since returned to Distinctive communities in places like New Jersey, Jedlowksi said.
“We’re starting to see some of those people that left us kind of dipped in Covid, and we now have this list of people that we are calling to get back into the workforce,” he added.
Goodwin Living also puts up $50,000 for staff who have worked at the organization for 20 years or more to help pay for a move into one of the organization’s life plan communities. For workers with a 40-year career at Goodwin, the organization offers a $100,000 move-in incentive.
“We’ve had a number of team members who’ve moved in,” Liebrich said. “What it does is it sets the tone that we care about you for day one, but we care about you for year 20, year 40 … we’re really focused on it.”
But despite these efforts, there is only so much operators can do to quickly refill depleted workforces, and a lack of immigration will only make staffing tougher. And this is not a “future concern” that operators must grapple with in months or years – it is here now, Smith Sloan said.
“These are hardworking, taxpaying individuals who have dutifully obtained the necessary documentation to serve in vital roles in the U.S. workforce, including difficult to fill positions in the strained aging services sector,” she said.
