Hispanic workers adjust to shift in sector by learning new skills

As some parts of the country reel from plummeting home values and a construction slump, many Hispanic workers have been forced to find other kinds of jobs — even in Oklahoma, where a more muted slowdown still means less work.

"I use to work for an independent contractor who did all residential. He had to completely switch things around,” said Darrel John, a 21-year-old roofer from Oklahoma City. "That's why I came here.”

John, Terry Ladd, 47, Chris Sanchez, 31, and Mario Silvas, 41, are all now commercial roofers. For them, the key to keeping the bills paid has been skill versatility — from roof work to framing to tile work — whatever the job entails.

"We get nothing up there but the straight up sun and the heat. It's like a microwave box. But it's worth it, it pays you well, keeps you in shape,” Sanchez said. "We keep busy because we do it all.”

‘The hardest hit'

Compared with 2004 numbers, building permits for 2007 were off about 20 percent in Oklahoma City, according to numbers from the Builder Report. Nationally speaking, the slumping real estate market led to a loss of nearly 250,000 jobs for Hispanic workers. The unemployment rate for Hispanic workers was 6.5 percent for the first quarter of 2008 compared with 4.7 percent for all non-Hispanics, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Hispanic Center.

"I don't know what employers have been up to, but the evidence shows that there is a disproportionate number of undocumented working in the construction sector,” said Rakesh Kochhar, the report's author and associate director for research with the Pew Hispanic Center. "If you consider that, in this climate of economic slowdown, along with increased enforcement, they are being hardest hit.”

Other factors including the transient nature of foreign-born immigrants and lower union membership also help explain that as budgets have gotten tighter, those workers have been the first to be let go, Kochhar said.

In 2006, Hispanic workers were near equity with non-Hispanic workers. So far, in 2008, it's at 6.5 percent compared with 4.7 percent for non-Hispanic workers.

This spike in unemployment has hit immigrants exceptionally hard, according to the report. Historically, foreign-born Hispanics have always had lower unemployment rates than native-born Hispanics. This year, for the first time since 2003, the unemployment rate for foreign-born Hispanics was 7.

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