Catherwood LibraryILR School

The proportion of native-born American unemployed hanging out on street corners and in home improvement superstore parking lots hoping for a day's work has drastically increased since 2006, according to UCLA professor Abel Valenzuela Jr. Valenzuela estimated in a report in 2006 that American workers made up 7% of the people seeking day-laborer work on any given day. Now he guesses that they make up 14%, or, in other words, have doubled their presence. Valenzuela says communities where a large number of construction jobs have been lost have seen a particular increase in the proportion of Caucasian men waiting on street corners and parking lots for work. He points to Tucson, Arizona, Arlington, Virgina, and Los Angeles as three of the worst-hit cities, where day-laborer positions usually dominated by illegal immigrants have seen drastic changes in their racial and ethnic distributions.