Hispanic workers adjust to shift in sector by learning new skills
Hispanic workers adjust to shift in sector by learning new skills
By Devona Walker
Comments 
19
Published: June 7, 2008
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.
More Info
From left Darrel John, 21, Chris Sanchez, 31, Mario Silvas,41, and Terry Ladd,47, at a construction site Thursday in Oklahoma CIty. By DEVONA WALKER, THE OKLAHOMAN
Advertisement
‘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 7.5 percent. Foreign-born Hispanics makes up 52.5 percent of working-age Hispanics. Hispanics account for 14.2 percent of the U.S. labor force.
"They are here, as they say, to work. Some come here with a job in hand,” Kochhar said, adding the latest labor trends indicate a dramatic reversal for Hispanic immigrants.
Even as home building stumbled in 2006, Hispanics found nearly 300,000 new construction jobs, according to the report.
But in 2007, about 221,000 foreign-born Hispanic workers left the construction sector. More than 150,000 had migrated to the U.S. from Mexico.
Distress not felt by all
For numerous Oklahoma construction companies, whose workers are largely independent contractors and not employees, this distress is not entirely apparent.
"We definitely had to change our mindset to make sure we had the systems in place to work with Hispanic homebuyers,” said Steve Shoemaker, director of marketing for Oklahoma City-based Ideal Homes. "We also have started allocating more and more of our marketing dollars to the Hispanic part of the community.
"But I can't speak to our tradesmen and contractors and suppliers, and what they are feeling. Short of providing legal documentation and insurance verification, they operate as their own business,” he added.
The Oklahoma economy has been insulated from some of the national downturn by the energy and natural gas markets. It also never experienced superficial run-ups in housing prices. Some speculate the local market might not need correcting anytime soon. But Shoemaker said there has been some fallout.
"We have a lot of companies here in Oklahoma that do business in other states, and they are getting hit hard. But the ace up our sleeve is the oil and gas sector,” Shoemaker said, adding that on the frontlines of the construction sector the distress is evident.
"Even though we are in Oklahoma City, people do not live in a bubble. I can tell you with a fair amount of certainty one of the trickle down effects has been consumer confidence. ... Consumers have this, ‘wait and see mentality' because they hear about what is happening in other markets.”
Mike Means, president of the Oklahoma State Home Builders Association, echoed those sentiments, but he also said there is still plenty of construction work and that Hispanic workers continue to remain as a staple of that labor sector.
"It's not like if you throw a house out there, it's going to sell tomorrow,” Means said.
Especially in high-end new housing, there are some products that have been on the market for about six months, Means said.
"But at least we still have products being built and products being sold. We're still building and selling,” he said. "Our problem continues to be finding workers. And the Hispanics are the ones willing to work.”
For the commercial roofing crew, who on a recent afternoon were finishing up a job at the Hunzicker Brothers electrical distributor company on North Virginia Avenue, work — regardless of financial projects and unemployment numbers — continues to come in.
No sign of changing
In the construction sector about 35 percent of the workers are Hispanic, according to the National Association of Home Builders. For Terry Ladd, who is white and one of the oldest roofers on the crew, that ethnic make-up shows no sign of changing.
He has gotten used to being the minority on the job.
"The Mexicans are the only ones that can stay up there,” Ladd said, talking about hot commercial rooftops, a working environment that can add about 40 degrees to a 100 degree day.
"Besides we all turn brown after a while up there,” he added.
Related Topics:
Special Interest Groups, Business, Economic Indicators, Real Estate, Hispanic and Latino Issues, Labor Market, Unemployment Rate, Job Losses
Prev
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
Thank you for joining our conversations on newsok. We encourage your discussions but ask that you stay within the bounds of our terms and conditions. Please help us by reporting comments that violate these guidelines. To review our rules of engagement, go to Commenting and posting policy.
Log in below or sign up (it's free).
It is STILWELL NOT STILL WELL
HA HA HA.. You are not so smart after all, you dufus.
Contrary to your belief, you DON'T know everything so SHUT YOUR BIG FAT THINK YOU KNOW IT ALL MOUTH !!!!
Richard of Oklahoma City, what you may not know is that the United States is one of the few remaining countries in the world with a death penalty. We have the honor of imprisoning more of our own citizens per capita than any other nation, and we kill more of them per capita than China or Russia. As for the judges, Judge Cauthron's ruling this week very carefully quoted Constitutional, Federal Statute and Casea Law bringing into question whether the sections she addressed are constitutional. The case goes on, and there is a chance that her ruling allowing for a temporary injunction will be lifted. But, the ruling was very thorough in its citations, and equally thorough and careful in its reasoning. It is also possible it will not only be allowed to stand, but will be changed to a permanent injunction so far as those sections of our state's attempt at regulating immigration are concerned. If that should be the ultimate decision, it will be after the full legal process has been exhausted and Judge Cauthron's ruling has been studied as carefully by others as it seems to have been by her. Your rhetoric is way out of proportion to the non-existence of your reasoning.
the unoklahoman cannot get it's act together; on friday they ran a story about a new bishop in arkansas who was just so upset about the plight of hispanics (where was he a few hundred tears ago when his church was killing them like flies)and next was traitor walker with one of her stories of lies about the criminals, and then the story out of the world court where the mexican government was decrying the fact that their "citizens" where being so mistreated by the us courts for giving them death sentences for their acts of murder and same.
what is it unoklahoman are these criminals illegal imigrants (wanting to be our citizens) or are they just citizens of another country living off us taxpayers?