We had a community of 10 million extremely talented and hardworking people illegally building houses for $4 an hour. It's beyond me to comprehend the moral valence of our decision, starting in 2016, to remove this group from the labor force- it was definitely unethical to deport them, it was definitely unethical to exploit them. Practically speaking though, I don't know why anyone's shocked that afterwards the price to build a home skyrocketed.
From my experience, illegals weren't making $4/hr building houses, at least not in the areas I knew. You'd pull down $15 minimum and often in cash, in California in the boom times that are now 20 years ago.
That's still only one third to one half of a fully loaded system legible worker though. And when illegible labor goes away, it's not like there's a supply of legible workers that have been just sitting around waiting to take over the work. This also ties in to the seeming overabundance of management layers, as there are now drastically fewer people to be managed.
And itβs something people miss - illegal labor does suppress wages somewhat but definitely defrauds the government and any other things that depend on correctly reported income.
