Well, I only hire licensed contractors, including painters, but in the trades (at least in the Bay Area) people I've hired are happy for the work and since my

Well, I only hire licensed contractors, including painters, but in the trades (at least in the Bay Area) people I've hired are happy for the work and since my first project in 1993, have complained about the flood of illegals taking work from them by undercutting on the price. I would imagine that a lot of people don't realize the risk they take hiring an unlicensed contractor. So the law-abiding tradespeople lose work to that. You cannot risk hiring unlicensed tradespeople unless you're just really, really stupid. The "loss of insurance" risk alone is bad enough.