Probably none [edit: in manufacturing]. Most illegal immigrants don’t work manufacturing. The three most common jobs for illegals around here are construction, yardcare, and building cleaning via nested subcontractors. Manufactures have hard assets they could loose. Sketchy subcontractors can just disappear and rename.
The growth is from the demand side - people are buying more right now.
> Probably none. Most illegal immigrants don’t work manufacturing.
You say that as if the jobs taken by illegals exist in some alternate universe where simple economic principles don't apply.
If an illegal immigrant's job is vacant (because he couldn't enter the country) and a would-be manufacturing worker fills that job, that obviously has a direct impact on the manufacturer's ability to hire that worker. He's no longer looking for a job because he filled a vacancy left by an illegal immigrant.
This makes little sense. Illegal immigrants usually occupy the least qualified and least-paid jobs. Few persons that are qualified to apply for a manufacturing would rather apply for a job that an illegal immigrant could get.
Do the illegal immigrants take those jobs because they pay so little, or do those jobs pay so little because there has always been a steady supply of illegal immigrants desperate to fill them at below-market prices?
If your business model relies on wages being suppressed by those illegal workers, then maybe your business deserves to go bankrupt when the supply dries up and Americans start demanding $15/hour.
First off, these businesses typically don’t “rely on” those wages, the owner is just taking a $20k bonus because they can and they like money.
Undocumented workers take the jobs because there is no financial incentive for an owner to risk breaking the law unless they are getting cash back. The worker is basically paying their employer to break the law.
Isn't lower class work interchangeable to some extent ?
Less illegals to do construction means a larger portion of construction it will be done by legal employees, which reduces the available pool for manufacturing.
Construction is not particularly more interchangeable than programming. Inexperienced workers can do some tasks, which have been prepped by more experienced workers. A worker operating out of their depth will cause problems that cost 10x to fix.
In other words: you can fill part of your staff with interchangeable workers, but not all of it.
Those jobs are unskilled, so they are easy to learn even if you don’t speak or can read the native language.
Most traditional manufacturing jobs require being able to read/write the native language. Also, manufacturing companies are sometimes audited by standard bodies that involve interviews with workers (mainly to see if they understand quality control).
>In some industries the labour shortage seems acute. Now is not a good time for Americans to remodel their bathrooms: tile and terrazzo contractors earn 11% more per hour than a year ago (and fully one-third more than in 2014).
This is exactly the type of jobs that have been flooded by immigrants from Latin America - both illegal and legal - for decades. I speak Spanish and often talk with immigrants at bars or wherever, and they work in numerous industries.
The one thing that changed my view of the whole system was realizing that absolutely no company gives a shit about the laws. Guys who had been here a year or less, couldn't speak any English, were hired for government contracting jobs on roads and the metro paying tons of overtime at near-union wages.
Also, labor markets are fluid. If a citizen can make more in construction, he might quit his shitty manufacturing job.
But, hey, anything to continue with the absurd narrative that massive immigration hasn't been a very major part of wage destruction for both blue-collar and also white-collar jobs via H1Bs, OPT, L1, etc.
You are right but there are other factors too. We've been pushing mediocre students through colleges at an exorbitant price when 30 years ago a lot of these people would have gone into the trades. Supply and demand plays into it domestically too. I agree that immigrants are filling the gap right now. Nature abhors a vacuum.
The growth is from the demand side - people are buying more right now.