10 ms·

In this time-period there has been a large-scale introduction of undocumented workers into the construction labor force. They are a quarter of some construction

In this time-period there has been a large-scale introduction of undocumented workers into the construction labor force. They are a quarter of some construction labor categories. Perhaps using undocumented subcontractors may play a role in lower productivity growth (cheap, unstable, and relatively unskilled labor) or maybe just distorting the statistics. https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/EW-Construction-factsheet.pdf https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/...

huevosabio 4y ago
This is an unlikely hypothesis. Most likely explanation is just that we have been burdened with infinite amount regulatory busy work.
alexfromapex 4y ago
Also the real wages have not increased much but all the expenses have, it's just demoralizing
- a-user-you-like 4y ago
  You mean inflating the currency to hell has negative consequences? Shock.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  It cannot be the case that “all expenses” have grown faster than inflation (which is what real wages takes into account).
  - swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
    All expenses have grown faster than wages, or wages have not kept up with inflation Either way its a pay drop.
    - rahimnathwani 4y ago
      GGP referred to 'real wages', and implied that they've increased.
    - vkou 4y ago
      > All expenses have grown faster than wages, or wages have not kept up with inflation Your expense is someone else's wage + a capitalist's profit margin. Expenses across the entire economy can only outgrow wages if someone's taking a bigger slice of profit off the top. When we talk about inflation, we always conflate the two, as if they are the same thing. They are not.
      - brewdad 4y ago
        > Expenses across the entire economy can only outgrow wages if someone's taking a bigger slice of profit off the top. Have you paid attention to the Delta between executive pay and that of general labor over the past 4 decades? This is exactly what has been happening.
    - gruez 4y ago
      > All expenses have grown faster than wages, or wages have not kept up with inflation Source? Even the famously wrong[1] productivity/wage gap graph from epi.org admits that wage has at least been growing in real terms. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/6rtoh4/productivity_pay_gap_in_epi_we_trust/ https://old.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/6rtoh4/produc...
      - jessaustin 4y ago
        I've seen some pretty dumb arguments linked here but that one takes the cake. The EPI graph isn’t measuring productivity vs. pay, even for "typical workers"; it’s measuring wage inequality. Umm yes it is a problem that wages for the vast majority of workers have stagnated; the possibility that some CEOs have done well doesn't counteract that. Also if they don't like the particular figures that "EPI" used, maybe they would prefer the Fed's research that shows exactly the same phenomenon using different data sources? [0] Then there is some reference to Mankiw making some assumption about labor supply and demand being infinitely differentiable and continuous, as well as violating "Rule V" in the adjacent sidebar. Meanwhile the newly-constructed local Taco Bell has two employees, a closed dining room, and the drive-in queue starts on the road before the entrance to the parking lot. This is my shocked face, at Mankiw doing something dumb. Essentially, we should not see 40 year runs of compensation lagging productivity due to some outsized returns to shareholders. That would likely reveal a structural problem in the labor market, at least by my understanding. "This would be a bad thing and our system is perfect so this accusation of badness must be wrong!" OK, Pollyanna. It would be inconvenient if the increased market concentration we see in every industry has given the remaining firms greater pricing power both as buyers of labor and inputs and sellers of products, so let's assume that didn't happen even though this graph clearly shows it. Truth in advertising for this subreddit, it seems. Psychological commitment to the status quo yields unconvincing arguments plainly contradicted by public experience. [0] https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-synopses/2015/06/24/lagging-long-term-wage-growth/ https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-synops...
  - samstave 4y ago
    Do "real wages" include exec bonuses in the maths? What about waste on MBAs? - I have MILLIONS of square feet of FAANG builds under my belt (including healthcare, which is never included in FAANG (but now that one of the hospitals I was designer of was purchased under the Zuck's name...)) should be included. I've made so many people more rich.
- nxm 4y ago
  But people still want and yell for “affordable housing”. Can’t have your cake and eat it too
  - arcticbull 4y ago
    Affordable housing is just a zoning issue. The cost of construction is a tiny fraction of the cost of a new house in major metros. The cake you can't have and eat at the same time is: "I want affordable housing" and "I want my house to be a good investment."
    - loandbehold 4y ago
      That's not even remotely true. Cost of construction is typically 60 to 80% of the cost. In high cost of living areas land is more expensive but so are construction costs.
      - CydeWeys 4y ago
        There's no way. Most of the value of housing in expensive areas is the land itself, not the cost of the building.
        SideQuark 4y ago
        Most houses aren't built where land is so expensive, so that's nearly irrelevant to the overall cost of housing in the US
        loandbehold 4y ago
        You are wrong. For instance in Southern California the cost to build new house is around $350 per sqft. Building 2000 sqft house is around $700K. House like that may sell for around 1 million. So that would be 70% construction and 30% land.
        notch656c 4y ago
        How does that happen? For 700k I could hire 2 skilled persons and 5 undocumented immigrants to work an entire year. How long does it take to raise a house?
stcredzero 4y ago
There is a lot of historical evidence, that deep knowledge and long tail expertise in specific industries is carried in groups of people with a close knit subculture. Such knowledge can also be transmitted from one subculture to another, with varying degrees of success. In order to bring in new people, one must either bring in a few beginners into a majority competent population, or have one subculture highly motivated to absorb and replicate the success of another. This is well covered in Migrations And Cultures: A World View by Thomas Sowell.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ren_engineer 4y ago
the language barrier would definitely slow things down as well, I've seen plenty of construction sites where there directions have to be translated to Spanish and things are frequently lost in translation. Plus it prevents general brainstorming between a large chunk of the construction team who only have a 1-2 people capable of translating between the groups
tristor 4y ago
I think this is one of the major impacts. My experience (family in construction) is that day labor / undocumented workers often don't have construction skills, and so have to be trained on the job, and each crew has mostly new/unskilled folks with a few skilled folks to guide them and keep them on track. Over time, these folks become skilled, and generally end up running crews. It's very commonplace to find the more experience undocumented workers being the ones running small subcontract crews under the table with day labor, because they speak fluent Spanish.
- robotresearcher 4y ago
  How is the labor cost accounting done in businesses that rely on such labor? How does the risk of government sanctions to the business play out? I'm interested where the blind-eyes are built in.
  - tristor 4y ago
    > I'm interested where the blind-eyes are built in. The blind eyes are built in at every single layer. I mean, it only requires a master's license to pull a permit, but master's in trades almost are never hands on, it's all journeymen, apprentices, or day labor. You as a general contractor sub out a master and his crew, and as long as the permitting happens in a timely manner and the inspection passes, you really don't care about anything else. The city doesn't care, because the master is on-site for inspection, so as long as inspection passes, they're not going down the line and asking everyone for ID or anything. There's SO MANY blind eyes, at every layer. It's pretty much a "don't ask, don't tell" policy because if we actually started enforcing the law, nothing would get done. There are significant industries in the US that are almost entirely reliant on day labor / undocumented immigrants, construction is one of them.
- huevosabio 4y ago
  My experience (in the Bay Area) has been that regardless of country of origin, construction work is insanely inefficient. Lots of administrative bs, lots of made up rules, lack of communication between trades, tons of "not my job" attitude.
samstave 4y ago
Have you heard of Bangledesh, India, Phillipines and their relation to middle east construction practices project-managed by NL, UK pms? I hope you understand, because of the implications.
- jzebedee 4y ago
  No, I haven't. What's the connection?
  - samstave 4y ago
    They hire the workers from poor countries, but hire the engineering/PM/construction mgmt talent from NL/UK and at times US... but those guys are making 6 figs while the workers are having their passports stolen.
sharemywin 4y ago
Are undocumented workers factored into the number of employees? I would assume the are excluded from the # of workers in the calculation.
- wmil 4y ago
  There's no reason they would be excluded. They are getting paid so they'd show up on the books.
  - sharemywin 4y ago
    most contractors will take cash as payment. some offer discounts. wink wink.
  - CydeWeys 4y ago
    I mean, if you're illegally hiring someone, you're not gonna pay them on the book.
    - withinboredom 4y ago
      It's on the books, under "toilets" or something. That money has to go somewhere. Also, undocumented workers still have to pay income taxes.
      - baremetal 4y ago
        >Also, undocumented workers still have to pay income taxes. Undocumented workers are sometimes paid in cash.
        CydeWeys 4y ago
        More than sometimes, I would say they are mostly paid in cash.
        withinboredom 4y ago
        Getting paid in cash doesn’t excuse you from paying taxes, or filing them.
SpeedilyDamage 4y ago
What’s wild is that the entire concept, as we know it, of “undocumented workers” only existed for the past ~22 years.
- treeman79 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Diederich 4y ago
    I grew up in Southern California in the 1970s, and a non-trival percentage of the daily conversations I had with normal people had to be in Spanish, because their English was much worse than my Spanish, which was fair. "Southern California" was/is a very, very big area. I grew up southeast of downtown. Can you share where/when you grew up? Just curious. As far as 'replacement': I can't dismiss such opinions out of hand, but for another anecdote: two of my great grandparents, who came from Germany in the late 19th century, lived in the US for many decades and never learned English that well. Their children, my dad's father, of course spoke English fluently.
    - SpeedilyDamage 4y ago
      I guess I’m not sure I understand what’s so great about English anyway. Why not switch to Spanish, or at least adopt a more bilingual approach where it makes sense.
- marcusverus 4y ago
  You think that the concept of unauthorized workers coming across the border has only existed since the year 2000? I think you're confusing the term "undocumented" or "undocumented worker" with the underlying concept that's referenced by the terms. The concept has long been in in the public spotlight using different terms ("illegal" or "illegal alien"). Here's some statements from Gerald Ford on the same concept, using the old lingo: https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0110/1181029.pdf https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0110/1181...
javajosh 4y ago
>undocumented workers [are responsible for the productivity drop] I am confused by this assertion. If they are undocumented, wouldn't they be excluded in the stats? And if they aren't included in the stats, shouldn't we expect an artificial increase in worker productivity? If there is a 4:1 undocumented to documented ratio, then that 1 documented person will get "credit" for the work of 5 people! Even if 4 of those people are relatively unskilled, that's still a big boost. My initial thought about this is that productivity declines because workers wait around a lot, and they wait around because of ballooning administrative overhead. This would also be consistent with what we know about state of the medical industry and academia during the same time period.
- taeric 4y ago
  I'm inclined to take your side on this. By virtue of being undocumented, they should be boosting the perceived productivity, not dampening it. If I was to steelman the idea, though; I would guess that removing incentives in the form of higher pay will lower the contributions of everyone involved?
  - michaelmrose 4y ago
    If your labor hours are billable why on Earth should undocumented in this context mean unaccounted for?
    - taeric 4y ago
      I think I understand the question. The disagreement seems to be what "undocumented worker" here means. If you think it means the worker is on the books, but is not a citizen, then you get to your question. It should be roughly the same. If you think it means that the worker was off the books, regardless of citizenship, then you arrive at the other. My consideration is if I am a cleaner and get my child to help out on a few jobs, my child will not be a documented worker and it will be a transparent boost to my productivity. Indeed, many subcontractors and migrant workers will use family as a cheap way to boost productivity so that they can take more jobs. I grant that construction may land on the other interpretation. There are usually more rules for that kind of work. (Though, in rural areas? Not sure.)
hector_vasquez 4y ago
Paying less for labor increases productivity. Anyone in the construction industry will point to the code books for their explanations.
peoplefromibiza 4y ago
> In this time-period there has been a large-scale introduction of undocumented workers into the construction labor force or, as usually happens, being "documented" have become more and more difficult, so the number of undocumented workers has gone up as a consequence. also, immigrants are replacing those workers who are not willing to do the job most of the time. it's not unusual everywhere you go in the west to witness that a large portion of construction workers are immigrants. Here in Italy it's mostly people from Romania, North Africa and other eastern European Countries. Virtually no Italian wants to be a mason anymore. They rather prefer to work for app-based tech companies (Glovo and such). And don't underestimate bureaucracy.
renewiltord 4y ago
From the working paper: > There are several plausible channels for labor measurement difficulties in construction, including a higher than average frequency of employees working irregular hours, contractor labor that may be misclassified by survey respondents, and, especially in more recent decades, labor supplied by undocumented workers. It then goes on to talk about that in more detail, but I won't copy that in because every time I do, someone goes on with "but what about X?" where X is also in the very next paragraph. Nothing wrong with coming up with the hypothesis, honestly. But the extraordinary number of responses to your comment that speculate on something that one can immediately find are just so typical of HN comments. I sometimes see that in software engineering where some engineer will tell me about some library we're using that we have access to source code for: "yeah, I looked at the docs and it's not clear if it does A or B". But...the source code is right there. Why not just use that? At least then if the library is doing it wrong you'll know for sure.
freitzkriesler 4y ago
You're going to get a lot replies nit picking this, but as a former construction PM gone software PM, I can tell you this: good skilled tradesmen are hard to find and their illegal immigrant fill ins (even the legal ones) are dangerous, do shoddy work, and will almost always delay a construction project. Let me put it into HN terms: It's like hiring a bunch of off shore junior devs to save money and then you wonder why the finished product is so shoddy or worse keeps failing QC. Then you have to bring in the $100/hr senior dev to clean up the mess. Not a lot of differences between building software and well buildings.
valray 4y ago
The undocumented workers that I personally know are skilled, motivated, and diligent workers. Perhaps in part because they desperately need to hold on to this source of income. If anything, I think they would boost productivity metrics.
rsj_hn 4y ago
I don't think this is due to illegal aliens, without which our construction industry would be in even worse shape, but rather that there have been massive declines in the competence of domestic workers across the board, and this has been hidden by outsourcing, importing skilled workers, and technological growth (e.g. have machines do things that domestic workers cannot), so that you see productivity declines in those areas where you cannot outsource and you cannot pay extreme wage premiums to attract people with basic reasoning skills. You can see this literally everywhere. Unless you are going to pay 200K+ you will have difficulties hiring reasonably intelligent, motivated, conscientious workers.
- slt2021 4y ago
  Bingo! Your comment hit the nail in the head. This also has to do with overall rise in cost of good education and decreasing quality of education in public schools across the board.

huevosabio 4y ago

This is an unlikely hypothesis. Most likely explanation is just that we have been burdened with infinite amount regulatory busy work.

alexfromapex 4y ago

Also the real wages have not increased much but all the expenses have, it's just demoralizing

a-user-you-like 4y ago
You mean inflating the currency to hell has negative consequences? Shock.
sokoloff 4y ago
It cannot be the case that “all expenses” have grown faster than inflation (which is what real wages takes into account).
- swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
  All expenses have grown faster than wages, or wages have not kept up with inflation Either way its a pay drop.
  - rahimnathwani 4y ago
    GGP referred to 'real wages', and implied that they've increased.
  - vkou 4y ago
    > All expenses have grown faster than wages, or wages have not kept up with inflation Your expense is someone else's wage + a capitalist's profit margin. Expenses across the entire economy can only outgrow wages if someone's taking a bigger slice of profit off the top. When we talk about inflation, we always conflate the two, as if they are the same thing. They are not.
    - brewdad 4y ago
      > Expenses across the entire economy can only outgrow wages if someone's taking a bigger slice of profit off the top. Have you paid attention to the Delta between executive pay and that of general labor over the past 4 decades? This is exactly what has been happening.
  - gruez 4y ago
    > All expenses have grown faster than wages, or wages have not kept up with inflation Source? Even the famously wrong[1] productivity/wage gap graph from epi.org admits that wage has at least been growing in real terms. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/6rtoh4/productivity_pay_gap_in_epi_we_trust/ https://old.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/6rtoh4/produc...
    - jessaustin 4y ago
      I've seen some pretty dumb arguments linked here but that one takes the cake. The EPI graph isn’t measuring productivity vs. pay, even for "typical workers"; it’s measuring wage inequality. Umm yes it is a problem that wages for the vast majority of workers have stagnated; the possibility that some CEOs have done well doesn't counteract that. Also if they don't like the particular figures that "EPI" used, maybe they would prefer the Fed's research that shows exactly the same phenomenon using different data sources? [0] Then there is some reference to Mankiw making some assumption about labor supply and demand being infinitely differentiable and continuous, as well as violating "Rule V" in the adjacent sidebar. Meanwhile the newly-constructed local Taco Bell has two employees, a closed dining room, and the drive-in queue starts on the road before the entrance to the parking lot. This is my shocked face, at Mankiw doing something dumb. Essentially, we should not see 40 year runs of compensation lagging productivity due to some outsized returns to shareholders. That would likely reveal a structural problem in the labor market, at least by my understanding. "This would be a bad thing and our system is perfect so this accusation of badness must be wrong!" OK, Pollyanna. It would be inconvenient if the increased market concentration we see in every industry has given the remaining firms greater pricing power both as buyers of labor and inputs and sellers of products, so let's assume that didn't happen even though this graph clearly shows it. Truth in advertising for this subreddit, it seems. Psychological commitment to the status quo yields unconvincing arguments plainly contradicted by public experience. [0] https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-synopses/2015/06/24/lagging-long-term-wage-growth/ https://research.stlouisfed.org/publications/economic-synops...
- samstave 4y ago
  Do "real wages" include exec bonuses in the maths? What about waste on MBAs? - I have MILLIONS of square feet of FAANG builds under my belt (including healthcare, which is never included in FAANG (but now that one of the hospitals I was designer of was purchased under the Zuck's name...)) should be included. I've made so many people more rich.
nxm 4y ago
But people still want and yell for “affordable housing”. Can’t have your cake and eat it too
- arcticbull 4y ago
  Affordable housing is just a zoning issue. The cost of construction is a tiny fraction of the cost of a new house in major metros. The cake you can't have and eat at the same time is: "I want affordable housing" and "I want my house to be a good investment."
  - loandbehold 4y ago
    That's not even remotely true. Cost of construction is typically 60 to 80% of the cost. In high cost of living areas land is more expensive but so are construction costs.
    - CydeWeys 4y ago
      There's no way. Most of the value of housing in expensive areas is the land itself, not the cost of the building.
      - SideQuark 4y ago
        Most houses aren't built where land is so expensive, so that's nearly irrelevant to the overall cost of housing in the US
      - loandbehold 4y ago
        You are wrong. For instance in Southern California the cost to build new house is around $350 per sqft. Building 2000 sqft house is around $700K. House like that may sell for around 1 million. So that would be 70% construction and 30% land.
        notch656c 4y ago
        How does that happen? For 700k I could hire 2 skilled persons and 5 undocumented immigrants to work an entire year. How long does it take to raise a house?

stcredzero 4y ago

There is a lot of historical evidence, that deep knowledge and long tail expertise in specific industries is carried in groups of people with a close knit subculture. Such knowledge can also be transmitted from one subculture to another, with varying degrees of success. In order to bring in new people, one must either bring in a few beginners into a majority competent population, or have one subculture highly motivated to absorb and replicate the success of another. This is well covered in Migrations And Cultures: A World View by Thomas Sowell.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ren_engineer 4y ago

the language barrier would definitely slow things down as well, I've seen plenty of construction sites where there directions have to be translated to Spanish and things are frequently lost in translation. Plus it prevents general brainstorming between a large chunk of the construction team who only have a 1-2 people capable of translating between the groups

tristor 4y ago

I think this is one of the major impacts. My experience (family in construction) is that day labor / undocumented workers often don't have construction skills, and so have to be trained on the job, and each crew has mostly new/unskilled folks with a few skilled folks to guide them and keep them on track. Over time, these folks become skilled, and generally end up running crews. It's very commonplace to find the more experience undocumented workers being the ones running small subcontract crews under the table with day labor, because they speak fluent Spanish.

robotresearcher 4y ago
How is the labor cost accounting done in businesses that rely on such labor? How does the risk of government sanctions to the business play out? I'm interested where the blind-eyes are built in.
- tristor 4y ago
  > I'm interested where the blind-eyes are built in. The blind eyes are built in at every single layer. I mean, it only requires a master's license to pull a permit, but master's in trades almost are never hands on, it's all journeymen, apprentices, or day labor. You as a general contractor sub out a master and his crew, and as long as the permitting happens in a timely manner and the inspection passes, you really don't care about anything else. The city doesn't care, because the master is on-site for inspection, so as long as inspection passes, they're not going down the line and asking everyone for ID or anything. There's SO MANY blind eyes, at every layer. It's pretty much a "don't ask, don't tell" policy because if we actually started enforcing the law, nothing would get done. There are significant industries in the US that are almost entirely reliant on day labor / undocumented immigrants, construction is one of them.
huevosabio 4y ago
My experience (in the Bay Area) has been that regardless of country of origin, construction work is insanely inefficient. Lots of administrative bs, lots of made up rules, lack of communication between trades, tons of "not my job" attitude.

samstave 4y ago

Have you heard of Bangledesh, India, Phillipines and their relation to middle east construction practices project-managed by NL, UK pms? I hope you understand, because of the implications.

jzebedee 4y ago
No, I haven't. What's the connection?
- samstave 4y ago
  They hire the workers from poor countries, but hire the engineering/PM/construction mgmt talent from NL/UK and at times US... but those guys are making 6 figs while the workers are having their passports stolen.

sharemywin 4y ago

Are undocumented workers factored into the number of employees? I would assume the are excluded from the # of workers in the calculation.

wmil 4y ago
There's no reason they would be excluded. They are getting paid so they'd show up on the books.
- sharemywin 4y ago
  most contractors will take cash as payment. some offer discounts. wink wink.
- CydeWeys 4y ago
  I mean, if you're illegally hiring someone, you're not gonna pay them on the book.
  - withinboredom 4y ago
    It's on the books, under "toilets" or something. That money has to go somewhere. Also, undocumented workers still have to pay income taxes.
    - baremetal 4y ago
      >Also, undocumented workers still have to pay income taxes. Undocumented workers are sometimes paid in cash.
      - CydeWeys 4y ago
        More than sometimes, I would say they are mostly paid in cash.
      - withinboredom 4y ago
        Getting paid in cash doesn’t excuse you from paying taxes, or filing them.

SpeedilyDamage 4y ago

What’s wild is that the entire concept, as we know it, of “undocumented workers” only existed for the past ~22 years.

treeman79 4y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Diederich 4y ago
  I grew up in Southern California in the 1970s, and a non-trival percentage of the daily conversations I had with normal people had to be in Spanish, because their English was much worse than my Spanish, which was fair. "Southern California" was/is a very, very big area. I grew up southeast of downtown. Can you share where/when you grew up? Just curious. As far as 'replacement': I can't dismiss such opinions out of hand, but for another anecdote: two of my great grandparents, who came from Germany in the late 19th century, lived in the US for many decades and never learned English that well. Their children, my dad's father, of course spoke English fluently.
  - SpeedilyDamage 4y ago
    I guess I’m not sure I understand what’s so great about English anyway. Why not switch to Spanish, or at least adopt a more bilingual approach where it makes sense.
marcusverus 4y ago
You think that the concept of unauthorized workers coming across the border has only existed since the year 2000? I think you're confusing the term "undocumented" or "undocumented worker" with the underlying concept that's referenced by the terms. The concept has long been in in the public spotlight using different terms ("illegal" or "illegal alien"). Here's some statements from Gerald Ford on the same concept, using the old lingo: https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0110/1181029.pdf https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/library/document/0110/1181...

javajosh 4y ago

>undocumented workers [are responsible for the productivity drop] I am confused by this assertion. If they are undocumented, wouldn't they be excluded in the stats? And if they aren't included in the stats, shouldn't we expect an artificial increase in worker productivity? If there is a 4:1 undocumented to documented ratio, then that 1 documented person will get "credit" for the work of 5 people! Even if 4 of those people are relatively unskilled, that's still a big boost. My initial thought about this is that productivity declines because workers wait around a lot, and they wait around because of ballooning administrative overhead. This would also be consistent with what we know about state of the medical industry and academia during the same time period.

taeric 4y ago
I'm inclined to take your side on this. By virtue of being undocumented, they should be boosting the perceived productivity, not dampening it. If I was to steelman the idea, though; I would guess that removing incentives in the form of higher pay will lower the contributions of everyone involved?
- michaelmrose 4y ago
  If your labor hours are billable why on Earth should undocumented in this context mean unaccounted for?
  - taeric 4y ago
    I think I understand the question. The disagreement seems to be what "undocumented worker" here means. If you think it means the worker is on the books, but is not a citizen, then you get to your question. It should be roughly the same. If you think it means that the worker was off the books, regardless of citizenship, then you arrive at the other. My consideration is if I am a cleaner and get my child to help out on a few jobs, my child will not be a documented worker and it will be a transparent boost to my productivity. Indeed, many subcontractors and migrant workers will use family as a cheap way to boost productivity so that they can take more jobs. I grant that construction may land on the other interpretation. There are usually more rules for that kind of work. (Though, in rural areas? Not sure.)

hector_vasquez 4y ago

Paying less for labor increases productivity. Anyone in the construction industry will point to the code books for their explanations.

peoplefromibiza 4y ago

> In this time-period there has been a large-scale introduction of undocumented workers into the construction labor force or, as usually happens, being "documented" have become more and more difficult, so the number of undocumented workers has gone up as a consequence. also, immigrants are replacing those workers who are not willing to do the job most of the time. it's not unusual everywhere you go in the west to witness that a large portion of construction workers are immigrants. Here in Italy it's mostly people from Romania, North Africa and other eastern European Countries. Virtually no Italian wants to be a mason anymore. They rather prefer to work for app-based tech companies (Glovo and such). And don't underestimate bureaucracy.

renewiltord 4y ago

From the working paper: > There are several plausible channels for labor measurement difficulties in construction, including a higher than average frequency of employees working irregular hours, contractor labor that may be misclassified by survey respondents, and, especially in more recent decades, labor supplied by undocumented workers. It then goes on to talk about that in more detail, but I won't copy that in because every time I do, someone goes on with "but what about X?" where X is also in the very next paragraph. Nothing wrong with coming up with the hypothesis, honestly. But the extraordinary number of responses to your comment that speculate on something that one can immediately find are just so typical of HN comments. I sometimes see that in software engineering where some engineer will tell me about some library we're using that we have access to source code for: "yeah, I looked at the docs and it's not clear if it does A or B". But...the source code is right there. Why not just use that? At least then if the library is doing it wrong you'll know for sure.

freitzkriesler 4y ago

You're going to get a lot replies nit picking this, but as a former construction PM gone software PM, I can tell you this: good skilled tradesmen are hard to find and their illegal immigrant fill ins (even the legal ones) are dangerous, do shoddy work, and will almost always delay a construction project. Let me put it into HN terms: It's like hiring a bunch of off shore junior devs to save money and then you wonder why the finished product is so shoddy or worse keeps failing QC. Then you have to bring in the $100/hr senior dev to clean up the mess. Not a lot of differences between building software and well buildings.

valray 4y ago

The undocumented workers that I personally know are skilled, motivated, and diligent workers. Perhaps in part because they desperately need to hold on to this source of income. If anything, I think they would boost productivity metrics.

rsj_hn 4y ago

I don't think this is due to illegal aliens, without which our construction industry would be in even worse shape, but rather that there have been massive declines in the competence of domestic workers across the board, and this has been hidden by outsourcing, importing skilled workers, and technological growth (e.g. have machines do things that domestic workers cannot), so that you see productivity declines in those areas where you cannot outsource and you cannot pay extreme wage premiums to attract people with basic reasoning skills. You can see this literally everywhere. Unless you are going to pay 200K+ you will have difficulties hiring reasonably intelligent, motivated, conscientious workers.

slt2021 4y ago
Bingo! Your comment hit the nail in the head. This also has to do with overall rise in cost of good education and decreasing quality of education in public schools across the board.