Real Estate's Trabajadores Escondidos -- the Hidden Workers

Job losses in the residential construction industry may be understated because of undocumented workers who don't show up in most statistical analyses, according to a report released this week by an economist for the Anderson Forecast at University of California, Los Angeles.

In the report, titled, "Where are the unemployed construction workers?" economist Jerry Nickelsburg studies a statistical anomaly in which the market conditions indicate there should be job losses in the residential construction industry but the numbers don't reflect this. (See Inman News report.)

The most likely scenario is that the data is missing the unemployed workers, according to the report. And a possible contributor is that undocumented workers do not appear in the data.

"They are the trabajadores escondidos or hidden workers," his report states. "The official unemployment rates are understating the unemployment as they are unable to count the hidden workers," and payroll data also misses them.

The report cites a Pew Hispanic Institute estimate that perhaps 12 percent to 20 percent of the undocumented workers living in the United States are employed in the construction industry, while another source estimates that immigrant labor represents between 30 percent to 50 percent of the construction workforce.

Builders know how important this labor force is -- they have lobbied hard against measures that could restrict the flow of immigrant labor to construction projects. Congress is moving at a congressional pace in considering an immigration reform bill.

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