When Neighbors Stop Knocking: The Impact of Canada’s 2025 Tourism Decline on U.S. Local Labor Markets

This article provides the first systematic assessment of the labor market effects of a 25% decline in travel by Canadians to the United States in 2025. We combine mobile phone data measuring the presence of Canadian visitors at the zip code × industry level with real-time employment data at the establishment level. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we estimate that establishments in the most exposed markets experienced employment declines of about 6%, implying a loss of between 13,900 and 42,100 jobs in the United States. These effects are spatially concentrated and should be interpreted as lower bounds, as our analysis is limited to small and medium-sized enterprises and does not account for spillover effects.

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