I’ve written about the benefit of cheap labor in construction, as I experienced it first hand. I know the roofers and concrete crew were illegals. The concrete guys were paid $20/hr (I paid the boss $25/hr for each guy), and they were true professionals. But it was still a low wage, and the boss didn’t have to pay 33% of wages for worker’s comp and all the other stuff. I’m sure that some bosses pay their workers even less. The labor cost and workers’ comp savings are huge. Whenever you hire a licensed contractor who does everything by the book, you are paying 33% more on labor to cover CA’s ridiculous workers’ comp taxes.
As far as the effect of them losing jobs: this has been covered before also. I wrote that 10% of labor in CA is not counted in the payroll report, because it is illegal and independent contractor labor. This is over 1 million people, 1.2 million I believe, and is the largest stealth employment labor force in the country. This figure includes contractors, realtors, and lenders who are self employed. Many of these jobs will be lost.
But there are millions of contractors who are legitimately on the payrolls. Only roofers and drywallers and concrete crew were illegals on my construction site; the others were US-born, mostly white guys.
There will be a huge fallout to this group, the group who owns homes.
