Data Reveals Who’s Behind Napa’s Wine Industry

NAPA VALLEY, CA — In recent debates, both gubernatorial candidates have gone out of their way to signal where they stand on immigration. Tom Steyer has said “immigrants built California,” while Javier Becerra has emphasized his record defending immigrant communities and workers.

Those arguments are unfolding against a more volatile backdrop: stepped-up ICE enforcement, claims that pro-immigrant policies make Californians less safe, and politically motivated complaints — repeatedly unsubstantiated yet persistent — that immigrants depress wages or strain public resources.

Set against this backdrop, a new report—"Immigrants in Napa County’s Communities and Economy"—offers a data-heavy look at the workforce behind one of Napa's most valuable commodities.

Drawing on U.S. Census data and economic modeling, the study paints a picture that is less about recent arrivals and more about a long-settled, deeply embedded community anchoring Napa's economy.

About 92 percent of Napa County immigrants have lived in the United States for at least a decade, and nearly half are now U.S. citizens. Immigrants are not a marginal group: they make up 21 percent of residents but 29 percent of the workforce, and nearly half of all children in the county have at least one immigrant parent. Much of the county’s Latino population growth has come from U.S.-born children of immigrants, underscoring how much of the region’s future workforce is already rooted locally.

At the same time, the report does not gloss over disparities. Immigrants are more likely to work full-time but earn less—about 77 cents on the dollar compared to U.S.-born workers—and many face barriers such as limited English proficiency or lower formal education levels. Rising housing costs have also pushed a growing share of workers—immigrant and U.S.-born alike—to commute into Napa from other counties, reshaping the local labor market.

The 2026 report follows on an initial study released more than a decade ago.

The 2012 study released by the Napa Valley Community Foundation reported that thousands of Napa County residents eligible for U.S. citizenship had not sought citizenship, largely because they lacked access to affordable legal services. The findings led to the foundation’s “One Napa Valley Initiative,” which organizers say has since helped more than 2,600 residents become U.S. citizens.

For the current study, the foundation partnered again with the Migration Policy Institute, the Washington, D.C.-based research group behind the original study, to examine how Napa County’s immigrant population has changed since then.

The updated report explores immigration’s role in Napa County’s communities, labor force, and wine-and-hospitality economy at a time of heightened immigration enforcement and political debate over immigration policy.

The updated 2026 report narrowed its focus to the workforce and the wine-and-hospitality economy, reflecting both the groundwork laid in 2012 and the increasingly charged political climate surrounding immigration today.

“The purpose of immigration has never been questioned to this extent the way it is now,” said a co-author of the report, Valerie Lacarte, senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.

The goal was to provide measurable economic data at a time when immigration’s role in California’s economy is under intense political scrutiny.

“It’s not enough,” Lacarte said. “But for people who do believe immigrants have an economic contribution, having numbers is useful. The next step is to use the facts.”

The report found that immigrant workers in Napa County generally earn less than U.S.-born workers, though researchers noted those wage differences are closely tied to the types of jobs immigrants disproportionately hold in vineyards, manufacturing, hospitality, and other labor-intensive sectors.

And, Lacarte said, while the report focuses specifically on foreign-born residents, researchers said immigration’s influence in Napa extends far beyond first-generation workers. Much of the county’s growth now comes from the children and grandchildren of immigrants, underscoring how deeply immigration is woven into Napa County’s workforce, economy, and identity.

Overall, the data suggests immigrant workers are more likely to complement the existing workforce than replace it. Looking at the bigger picture, as Lacarte pointed out, employers and industries have more impact on wages and employment opportunities than immigrants — or even a county.

In addition, many of the jobs immigrants perform in Napa’s wine and hospitality industries would be difficult to fill quickly if large numbers of workers were removed such as through immigration enforcement. That labor shortage concern is especially acute in vineyard and agricultural work, where employers already struggle to recruit younger workers.

The report highlights a deeper contradiction at the center of Napa’s economy: immigrant workers often occupy lower-wage jobs inside a global luxury industry built around high-end wine and tourism. While wages and benefits in Napa can be somewhat better than in other agricultural regions, the county’s high cost of living — driven in part by the success of the wine industry itself — makes it increasingly difficult for many workers to afford living there.

As housing costs have risen, a growing share of the workforce now commutes into Napa County from surrounding areas, meaning many workers who sustain the industry are less able to share fully in the region’s prosperity.

The findings are scheduled to be discussed at a Common Ground public forum today at the Yountville Community Center. Lacartewill be at the event.

“Napa County’s heavy reliance on immigrant labor in the wine and hospitality industry, particularly for crucial roles in vineyards, will be front of mind as communities experience increased immigration enforcement and as legal admissions channels are narrowed,” Lacarte and fellow authors Michael Fix and Allie Rutland wrote about the study.

Where the report becomes most consequential is in its economic analysis of Napa’s signature industries: wine, agriculture, and hospitality.

Using an input-output model, researchers estimate that foreign-born workers contribute about $1.5 billion annually to Napa County’s GDP—roughly 11 percent of the entire local economy. Their role is especially pronounced in agriculture and wine production, where immigrants make up the majority of workers in some segments.

The study then tests a scenario at the center of today’s political debate: what happens if immigration enforcement removes large numbers of workers, particularly those without legal status. The results are blunt.

Unauthorized immigrant workers alone account for an estimated $366 million in economic activity, or about 3 percent of GDP. Removing them would not just eliminate those jobs—it would trigger a cascade including a projected drop of roughly $1 billion in industry output and a 10 percent decline in local tax revenues, or roughly $28 million annually.

Crucially, those impacts would not be limited to undocumented workers. The model shows job losses spreading to U.S.-born and legally authorized workers, reflecting how tightly interconnected Napa’s economy is.

Even these estimates may be conservative. The report notes that farmworkers are often undercounted in federal data, and that ripple effects across industries—from trucking to real estate—are difficult to fully capture.

To estimate the impact of Napa’s wine and hospitality industries, the model analyzed county-level production, wages, jobs, and economic activity across interconnected sectors. Researchers noted that agricultural employment can be difficult to measure precisely because many farmworkers and agricultural operations involve self-employment or informal labor arrangements that are not fully captured in federal employment datasets.

However, the broader conclusion is hard to sidestep: in a region like Napa, immigration policy functions as economic policy. The wine and hospitality industry is not just reliant on immigrant labor—it is structurally built around it. Removing that workforce, even partially, would act less like a targeted enforcement action and more like a system-wide economic shock.

The authors of the report close with a set of recommendations for stabilizing the workforce and strengthening long-term economic contributions:

• Increasing civic participation and economic stability to help eligible immigrants become citizens
• Increase access to legal services as immigration pathways narrow and enforcement intensifies
• Invest in English-language programs, seen as key to mobility and community integration
• Support adult education and job training, especially for workers balancing low wages and family obligations
• Protect access to health and safety-net services, particularly as federal eligibility rules tighten
• Study and support the second generation, whose outcomes will shape Napa’s future workforce

The report’s economic estimates were produced by combining data from multiple large federal datasets to measure how industries affect the broader economy. Unlike the American Community Survey Census data used elsewhere in the report to profile Napa County residents, this data relies on macroeconomic data sources such as the U.S. Census Bureau’s Annual Survey of Manufactures, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Drawing on the outcome, the authors point to a consistent direction: Napa’s economy already depends on immigrant workers, but its long-term stability depends on how well those workers—and their children—are integrated, supported, and able to move up economically.

When: Thursday | 5:30-6:30 p.m. (doors open at 5:00 p.m.)

Where: Yountville Community Center, 6516 Washington St.

The meeting will be in English and Spanish