The Haitian community is one of the most economically active immigrant populations in the United States — and among the most at risk. This report, produced by the Haitian Christian Leaders Coalition, draws on the most current federal data to document where Haitian families stand economically in 2025: the contributions they make, the barriers they face, and what is at stake if immigration policy dismantles the foundation they have built.
Population Overview
The United States is home to approximately 852,000 Haitian-born immigrants as of February 2024 — more than triple the number recorded in 1990 and double the figure from 2000, reflecting decades of sustained growth (U.S. Census Bureau Current Population Survey, Feb. 2024). Including U.S.-born children of Haitian parents, the total Haitian-origin population in the United States reaches approximately 1.5 million people.
Florida is the undisputed center of Haitian America. Roughly 49–51 percent of all Haitian immigrants in the United States live in Florida — approximately 369,000 to 400,000 individuals. The U.S. Center for Immigration Studies identifies Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties as three of the four counties with the highest concentrations of Haitian immigrants in the nation. The greater Miami metropolitan area alone is home to nearly 4 percent of its total population born in Haiti (Migration Policy Institute, 2023).
Notably, the Haitian immigrant community has an exceptionally high rate of U.S. citizenship: 68.7 percent of Haitian-born immigrants were naturalized U.S. citizens as of February 2024, compared to 49.5 percent of the overall foreign-born population (CPS, 2024). This is not a transient community — it is one that has committed to this country at the highest legal level available.
Workforce Participation & Employment
Haitian immigrants participate in the labor force at a rate that surpasses both the overall immigrant population and the U.S.-born population. In 2022, approximately 69 percent of Haitian immigrants ages 16 and over were in the civilian labor force, compared to 67 percent of all immigrants and 62 percent of native-born Americans (U.S. Census Bureau ACS, 2022; Migration Policy Institute, 2023).
Haitian workers are concentrated heavily in service industries — including healthcare, hospitality, transportation, and domestic services — as well as construction and agriculture. In Florida specifically, immigrants (of all origins) account for 27.4 percent of the labor force, contribute significantly to the state’s healthcare sector (25.1% of nurses are foreign-born; 48.7% of health aides are foreign-born), and represent 37.9 percent of all entrepreneurs in the state (American Immigration Council, 2023).
Among the most significant — and often overlooked — economic roles of the Haitian community is in healthcare. Nationally, 103,000 Haitian immigrant health-care workers comprised the sixth-largest immigrant health-care workforce in the United States as of 2021, after those from the Philippines, Mexico, India, China/Hong Kong, and Jamaica. Most work in high-demand support roles: nursing assistants, personal care aides, and home health aides — the backbone of elder care in a rapidly aging country (Migration Policy Institute, 2023).
Economic Contributions: Taxes, Spending, and GDP
The Haitian community’s economic contributions are substantial and measurable. Advocates, citing data distributed among members of Congress in 2026, reported that Haitian nationals — including TPS holders — contribute an estimated $5.9 billion annually to the U.S. economy, pay approximately $805 million in federal and payroll taxes, and contribute $755 million in state and local taxes (Faith in Action, cited in Baptist Press, March 2026).
In Florida alone, the state’s 241,100 TPS holders — a population that includes a large proportion of Haitians — generate a combined household income of $6.3 billion, hold $4.9 billion in spending power, and pay a total of $1.37 billion in taxes ($485.9 million state and local; $880.8 million federal). Their employment rate stands at a remarkable 95.2 percent (American Immigration Council, 2023).
The median household income for Haitian immigrant households nationally was $65,000 in 2022 (U.S. Census Bureau ACS, 2022). While this trails the $75,000 median for all immigrant and U.S.-born households — reflecting barriers in credential recognition and access to capital — it represents significant productivity, especially given that 36.2 percent of Haitian immigrants and their young children still live in or near poverty, compared to 25.5 percent of U.S.-born Americans (ASEC CPS, 2023).
Entrepreneurship
The entrepreneurial drive of Haitian Americans is a defining feature of the community’s economic profile. In Florida, immigrant entrepreneurs — of which Haitians form a significant share — account for 521,700 business owners, generate $13.2 billion in total business income, and own 37.9 percent of all businesses in the state (American Immigration Council, 2023).
Haitian-owned businesses are especially prominent in South Florida’s service economy: transportation (including a large informal taxi/rideshare economy in Miami-Dade), healthcare services, beauty and personal care, food service, construction contracting, and real estate. Little Haiti — the cultural and commercial heart of the Haitian diaspora in Miami — represents a concentrated economic ecosystem anchored by small businesses, religious institutions, and community organizations.
Despite this energy, access to capital remains a significant barrier. Haitian-owned businesses are disproportionately excluded from formal small business lending. Studies consistently show that Black immigrant entrepreneurs face higher loan denial rates and lower approval amounts than white-owned counterparts, even when controlling for creditworthiness and business size. HCLC continues to call on local financial institutions and the Small Business Administration to address these disparities through targeted outreach, Creole-language resources, and community lending programs.
Remittances: The Lifeline to Haiti
One of the most profound — and most invisible — economic contributions of the Haitian diaspora is the flow of remittances to Haiti. Global remittances to Haiti have grown nearly eightfold since 2000, reaching an estimated $4.5 billion in 2022 — a figure that represents more than 22 percent of Haiti’s entire gross domestic product (World Bank / KNOMAD, 2023).
The United States is the primary source of these transfers. Haitian families in Florida, New York, Massachusetts, and other diaspora hubs send portions of their wages directly to family members who depend on this income for food, housing, school fees, and medical care. These transfers are not charity — they are a structural pillar of the Haitian economy. Any policy that disrupts the legal status and employment of the Haitian diaspora in the United States does not only harm Haitian Americans. It directly threatens the economic survival of hundreds of thousands of families in Haiti.
Education & Advancement
Educational attainment within the Haitian community is growing across generations, though significant gaps remain compared to both the U.S.-born population and the overall immigrant population. As of 2022, approximately 22.6 percent of Haitian immigrants ages 25 to 64 hold at least a college degree, compared to 37.6 percent of U.S.-born Americans and 35 percent of all immigrants (U.S. Census Bureau ACS, 2022).
Among more recent arrivals (2017–2021), only 12 percent held a college degree — significantly below the 47 percent college-degree rate for all immigrants arriving in the same period — reflecting the disrupted educational pathways of those fleeing acute crises in Haiti. At the same time, more than 1,000 students from Haiti were enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities in the 2021–22 academic year, comprising 9 percent of all Caribbean international students (Institute of International Education, 2022).
The second generation — U.S.-born children of Haitian parents — is advancing at markedly faster rates in higher education, particularly in nursing, medicine, law, and education. HCLC regards investment in Haitian youth education as a central pillar of long-term community economic development, and advocates for bilingual (English/Haitian Creole) financial literacy education, college access programming, and scholarship support.
Housing & Wealth Building
Homeownership — the primary vehicle for generational wealth in the United States — remains an area of disparity for Haitian immigrants. As of 2022, 48 percent of Haitian immigrant households live in owner-occupied housing, compared to 67 percent of U.S.-born households (U.S. Census Bureau ACS, 2022). In Florida, immigrants collectively hold $664.1 billion in housing wealth and paid $16.7 billion in rent in 2023 (American Immigration Council, 2023).
Barriers to homeownership for Haitian families include limited access to credit, lack of generational wealth transfers, lower median incomes, and language barriers in navigating the mortgage process. HCLC calls for expanded homeownership counseling programs in Haitian Creole, and for banks operating in South Florida to meet their Community Reinvestment Act obligations within Haitian-majority neighborhoods.
What Is at Stake: The Cost of Immigration Uncertainty
The most immediate economic threat facing the Haitian community in 2025 is not a market downturn or a lack of opportunity — it is the deliberate dismantling of the legal protections that allow Haitian Americans to work, build, and contribute. The Trump administration’s termination of Temporary Protected Status for Haitian nationals, and its broader enforcement posture, have already begun to produce measurable economic harm.
Church attendance in Haitian congregations has dropped sharply. Business owners report customers afraid to leave home. Workers are quitting jobs for fear of being stopped during their commute. The psychic cost — severe anxiety, and alarmingly, increased reports of suicidal ideation among the teenage children of TPS holders — cannot be reduced to a spreadsheet, but it will ultimately manifest in lost productivity, increased healthcare utilization, and community disinvestment (HCLC pastoral reports, 2025).
The economic stakes are concrete and quantifiable. Removing TPS protections from the estimated 241,100 TPS holders in Florida alone would eliminate $6.3 billion in household income, $4.9 billion in spending power, and $1.37 billion in tax revenues from the state’s economy — in addition to devastating the healthcare, construction, and service sectors that depend on this workforce (American Immigration Council, 2023).
HCLC’s Economic Development Priorities for 2025
In response to both the community’s needs and the current policy environment, HCLC is advancing the following economic priorities in 2025:
- Legal access & employment protection — Connecting TPS holders and other vulnerable workers with immigration legal services and “Know Your Rights” education to maintain employment status.
- Financial literacy in Haitian Creole — Partnering with local credit unions, CDFIs, and financial institutions to deliver culturally relevant financial education across HCLC member churches.
- Small business access to capital — Advocating with the SBA and local lending institutions to close the lending gap facing Haitian-owned small businesses in South Florida.
- Homeownership counseling — Expanding HUD-certified housing counseling services accessible to Haitian Creole-speaking families in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties.
- Workforce development — Supporting credentialing programs for healthcare workers, particularly those whose Haitian credentials are not recognized in the U.S. system.
- Advocacy for TPS extension — Continuing to press Congress to extend Temporary Protected Status for Haitian nationals, as the loss of this protection would be economically catastrophic for families, communities, and the broader Florida economy.
Sources & Methodology
The data cited in this report are drawn from the following sources:
- U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey (ACS), 2022
- U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey (CPS), February 2024
- U.S. Census Bureau, Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC CPS), 2023
- Migration Policy Institute, Haitian Immigrants in the United States, November 2023
- Center for Immigration Studies, Fact Sheet on Haitian Immigrants in the United States, April 2024
- American Immigration Council, Immigrants in Florida, 2023
- World Bank / KNOMAD, Remittance Inflows, June 2023 update
- Faith in Action, TPS Economic Impact data distributed to Congress, 2026
- Institute of International Education, International Students: All Places of Origin, 2022
- HCLC pastoral network reports and community surveys, 2025
This report was compiled by the Haitian Christian Leaders Coalition, Miami, FL. For questions, corrections, or to request a downloadable version, contact us.