While some contractors dismiss the plan as political rhetoric, many say they can’t afford to lose more people from an aging, immigrant-dependent workforce still short of nearly 400,000 people.
Both presidential candidates promise to build more homes. One promises to deport hundreds of thousands of people who build them.
Former President Donald Trump’s pledge to “launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country” would hamstring construction firms already facing labor shortages and push record home prices higher, say industry leaders, contractors and economists.
“It would be detrimental to the construction industry and our labor supply and exacerbate our housing affordability problems,” said Jim Tobin, CEO of the National Association of Home Builders. The trade group considers foreign-born workers, regardless of legal status, “a vital and flexible source of labor” to builders, estimating they fill 30% of trade jobs like carpentry, plastering, masonry and electrical roles.
Not always about the wage. You could pay 200k per year and still have trouble finding people willing to climb up on a roof day in and day out.
Especially if they find out that roofer is the fourth-most dangerous job in the U.S.
https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-jobs-in-the-united-states
Incidentally, police officer is ranked at 22. Well below garbage collectors (5), delivery drivers (7), or agricultural workers (11).
I shudder at the thought of driving for work. It’s already so hard to keep up spatial awareness of the crazy drivers for an hour or less. I cannot imagine 8 hours of that.
And on top of all of that, you usually have to provide your own vehicle. Which means you basically drive it to death much earlier than the average lifespan of the car. If we’re talking something like Uber Eats, they don’t even cover your gas.
I cannot imagine it be a worthwhile investment. The only people I know who do Uber are retired and do it out of boredom. Fortunately, I don’t know a single soul who does it for a job (without having another job to do as well).
I don’t know anyone lately, but I know plenty of people who did it when they were younger. Including a trandgender friend who did it for maybe 20 years. I’m guessing she doesn’t have a lot of job opportunities here in Indiana. She’s such an awesome person too.
Try 11
There must be a good reason why why family quit 11! I’ll trust their judgement on this one.
The way I see it, there’s two options:
Pay people more. 300k, 400k, 500k, whatever it takes. Surely there’s a number that people would feel is worth the risk. The obvious downside is that increases the cost of construction.
Make the process of roofing safer - invent new safety gear or safety practices, automation equipment that can be operated from the ground, introduce legislation that encourages those practices or subsidizes the new equipment. The obvious downside is this requires upfront investment and cooperation between government and industry.
Either way, the current practice of “throw cheap immigrant labor at it until it goes away” is not tenable.
It’s not just “cheap” immigrant labor. Those laborers bring ability that you have a very hard time finding here.
Then the wages are still too low…
It really is not that simple.
It really IS that simple. You tell some schmuck off the street “I will pay you $300K a year to climb on roofs and nail down shingles all day.”, you really think they’ll say no? I don’t. Same with retail, same with food service, same with sales, painting, engineering, and more.
Historically underpaying job markets aren’t experiencing a “”““labor shortage””“” from lack of openings or bad press, they’re just finally realizing that paying people like shit then treating them poorly isn’t going to get them more workers.
They will say no especially when they hear his dangerous it is. My uncle fell off the roof and ended up with a hernia. It took forever to do the surgery to fix it. And really, 300k? How expensive do you think that’s going to make a house? As much as I hate the idea there’s only so much that you can charge for something. We’d have to somehow go after the corporation for unprecedented profit in addition to raising wages.
They’ll say yes. They won’t last long. The churn will be great and then there will be shortage. It really isn’t as simple as pay.
So your solution is an impoverished underclass that cannot escape work no one will do, you are sick.
Not at all.
And by that logic no country in the world would have soldiers either.
People have been doing dangerous jobs for pay since the existence of pay. If the pay is right someone will perform your dangerous job. If the payout isn’t worth the risk then they won’t. It’s the free market in action.
The free market currently says that a new home is worth X dollars because of what people are willing to pay vs. the labor going into it. Materials are cheap compared to the work. The rates laborers get paid stem from the free market equilibrium on that. Labor rates go up, house prices go up, home ownership goes down. Builders in the US get about 15% margin on building and selling new homes. You have maybe 10% of wiggle room before the profit in building homes is not worth the effort. So laborers could get paid…10% more at best before home prices go up. That’s not going to attract many more people to offset immigrant labor demand.
The people who have to work at low wages bc of legal and social suppression are effecting the market equalibrum. Labor costs are just as real a factor in the market as anything.
I have known enough growers and builders that no matter the pay, people cannot simply will themselves able to do that kind of work. It’s just.Not.That.Simple.
But yet crops still get planted and harvested and buildings still get built.