NYTimes:Only 4% of illegals work in agriculture...

[Longislander]

Reference: June 3, 2007 NY Times Sunday MONEY section, page 4, article entitled Shattering Stereotypes about Immigrant Workers by Daniel Altman.
Although his article is biased in favor of what he calls "undocumented" workers and he quotes suspect sources claiming illegals don't depress US citizens' wages, the statistics he cites are significant. They do shatter the oft-repeated myth that illegal immigrants are doing work "nobody else" wants to do. Altman gives the following statistics which he obtained from the Pew Hispanic Center's estimates for 2005:

Percentage of [illegal] workforce who work in:
19.9 Construction
14.3 Manufacturing
3.9 Agriculture, forestry, fishing, hunting
0.2 Mining
17.2 Leisure/hospitality
12.9 Business/professional services
11.4 Wholesale/retail trade
5.6 Education/health services
3.2 Financial activities
3.0 Transportation and utilities
1.2 Information
7.2 Other services

I did not find a good internet link to the entire story.

[Beckyal]

Seems like alot of these jobs are jobs that americans would like to do if given the chance.

[had_enuf]

I wonder what they assumed to be the total illegal alien population 2005. If they used their favorite 12M, these figures are way, way off.

Construction Jobs Expand for Latinos Despite Slump in Housing Market

Download the complete factsheet

Hispanic workers landed two out of every three new construction jobs in 2006, benefiting from strong employment growth in the industry even as the housing market endured a year-long slump.

The construction industry continues to be a key source of jobs for Hispanics and especially for those who are foreign born. The vast majority of new construction jobs in 2006 were filled by foreign-born Latinos, many of them recently arrived.

http://pewhispanic.org/factsheets/facts ... sheetID=28

[jp_48504]

Thanks for the post Longislander,
Can anyone help find the complete story?

[TexasGal]

Those numbers also prove that the GREAT MAJORITY of these jobs are jobs LEGAL Americans ARE doing!!!

I would believe the farmers that "crops rot in the fields" if I saw that 50% or higher of their workers being illegal. 4% is NOTHING!!

Same for some of the other industries. The highest was around 18% !!!!!

That's still a SMALL PIECE of all the millions of those jobs around the country in those industries being done by LEGAL Americans.

However, in high-illegal immigrant cities like Dallas and Los Angeles, I'm sure these percentages are much higher. Frankly, a lot of places WOULD shut down if the illegals left, but Dallas is already too crowded as it is. I wouldn't mind if building of new homes, apartments, and strip malls slowed to a trickle or nothing if the illegals left town. We could finally stop the OUTRAGEOUS outward sprawl Dallas has had just in the last 10 to 15 years!! I have friends who live 2 to 3 hours outside of town just to have a decent (affordable) place with a little land (1 acre or even 1/2 acre in some cases), and leave for work at 4 or 5am every morning to get to work!

I still remember Plano being the really "far away" city back in the early 1990's. Now it's almost in the middle of Dallas County, due to the huge population growth (and I can tell you that a good deal of it is from illegals).

Texas Gal

[jp_48504]

Here is the entire article.

Shattering Stereotypes About Immigrant Workers

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By DANIEL ALTMAN
Published: June 3, 2007

AS immigration legislation slowly makes its way through Congress, the debate about illegal immigrants’ role in the economy has intensified. To some people, they represent a black-market work force that is lowering the wages of legal immigrants and native-born Americans. To others, they are an essential part of several big industries. What’s the truth?
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L. M. Otero/Associated Press

In Dallas, men gathered in hopes of being hired. Construction is attracting many illegal immigrants, but so is manufacturing.
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Getting the whole truth is not easy, because illegal immigrants are not always easy to find, interview or otherwise include in government or private surveys. But some broad facts seem to be emerging, and they may shatter some preconceived notions: illegal immigrants do not just pick fruit, they do not just work off the books, they rarely earn less than the minimum wage and they may even be raising employment without harming incomes.

For example, there are plenty of illegal immigrants who are not working on farms along the West Coast, gardening or providing child care, according to figures from the Pew Hispanic Center, a research group in Washington. About 20 percent of illegal immigrants work in construction, 17 percent in leisure and hospitality industries, 14 percent in manufacturing and 11 percent in wholesale and retail trade.

In addition, illegal immigrants represent a substantial share of overall employment in quite a few industries, some of which require extensive skills and training. They may make up at least 10 percent of the work force in construction, leisure and hospitality, and in agriculture and related industries, according to figures calculated by the Pew Hispanic Center. But in specific occupations like cooking, painting, washing cars, packaging by hand and installation of carpets and floors, they may make up 20 percent or more.

Those industries badly need immigrant labor, far in excess of government quotas for legal immigrants. “We need a million-plus workers added to our work force over the next five or six years, and that is associated with people leaving the work force and obviously the forecasted growth in construction,â€

[Jean]

The highest is in construction!
Have a close relative who can hardly find work anymore in construction so this makes me angry, I'm pounding on the keyboard as I type this.

[MW]

Guess what, we deport 30 million illegal immigrants and you'll quickly start seeing a decrease in labor needs in the construction industry! How come we never here anything from the pro-illegal activist about the demands on services and products the illegals generate? Our current legal growth in population is right at, or slightly less than, replacement level. Bush's answer to keeping the economy humming along is to create more demand for services and products by forcing population growth. Quanity, not quality is what the Bush administration is concerned with. Our quality manufacturing jobs are being outsourced at an alarming rate (textiles are already practically gone), however, jobs in the service sector (lower paying jobs) are growing enough to replace the lost jobs. Yes, our unemployment rate is low, but unfortunately most of the new jobs being created are lowing paying jobs.

[WhatMattersMost]

I keep saying the same thing. Let's not forget about the tremendous amount of gas consumption the media keeps blaming Americans for. I have yet to read or hear anyone in the media talk about the amounts of gas illegals aliens consume while DUI without licenses or insurance and going to and from Walmart, the welfare office, the doctor, the grocery store, and job sites on a daily basis. Everything is always our fault