A Very Convenient Just-So Story About Construction Workers

Let’s consider an interesting notion: what if someone argued that child labor laws discouraged shorter individuals from taking jobs?

The first national child labor legislation, known as the Keating–Owen Child Labor Act, was enacted by President Woodrow Wilson on September 1, 1916. This law prohibited the interstate movement of goods produced in factories employing children under 14, as well as in mines utilizing children under 16. It also restricted excessive hours or night shifts for children under 16.

However, this law was invalidated by the Supreme Court a few years later. It wasn’t until the New Deal era that a lasting nationwide ban on child labor emerged, though many states had previously enacted their own restrictions.

Now, envision someone suggesting that prohibitions against child labor were negatively impacting businesses—not because those companies heavily relied on child workers, but because short individuals were avoiding jobs due to fears of being caught in anti-child labor efforts.

Typically, one would expect the opposite effect. Eliminating children from the labor pool could potentially spur a higher demand for adult workers. In fact, this change could lead to an increased need for shorter adults in certain roles where being smaller is actually advantageous—perhaps luring more short individuals into the job market.

At the very least, a claim like this warrants some solid evidence. It’s reasonable to ask for proof when someone makes an extraordinary assertion about people’s unexpected and illogical behaviors.

Yet, there’s no evidence that shorter individuals left the workforce when child labor laws were implemented.

This year, however, a comparable assertion has emerged—not regarding children but about undocumented individuals and workers legally permitted to work in the U.S.

The Homebuilders Say Legal Workers Won’t Show Up

“More than a third of builders across the country noted immigration enforcement actions in their areas over the past month, leading to construction delays and discouraging legal workers from attending work,” said Bill Owens, the Chairman of the National Association of Home Builders and a home builder from Worthington, Ohio, in a recent statement.

But why would increased immigration enforcement discourage legal workers from coming to work? The removal of unauthorized workers should logically increase demand—and wages—for those who are legal. This would provide more motivation for legal workers to come to work in the face of enforcement activities.

What does the data indicate? If immigration enforcement was indeed deterring legal workers, we would expect to see a drop in their workforce participation rate and the employment-population ratio. Contrary to this expectation, the participation rate for foreign-born men has remained stable over the past year. In fact, the employment-population ratio even improved slightly, from 74.6 percent in September last year to 74.9 percent last month.

If we focus specifically on the construction industry, we find that the official statistics don’t separate legal from illegal foreign workers. However, we can clearly identify one group: naturalized citizens. For naturalized men, construction employment between July and September saw a 4.2 percent decrease, which is slightly less than the 4.5 percent drop among native-born male workers. If legal workers were abstaining from work, illegal workers would have to be stepping in, even amidst a crackdown—and that’s quite an implausible scenario. So far, there’s no evidence suggesting that legal immigrants are being pushed out of work due to fears of deportation.

According to the NAHB’s own analysis from October 2, residential construction payrolls fell by 4,900 in September. However, this doesn’t seem to stem from workers staying home out of fear of ICE. In contrast, that same month saw an addition of about 16,100 workers in nonresidential construction. In other words, what’s likely happening is not that workers are avoiding jobs but rather that they are being drawn away from residential construction toward data center projects.

The homebuilding industry faces a bit of a conundrum when discussing immigration enforcement. They’re hesitant to acknowledge their reliance on illegal labor. Thus, when workers are not showing up, they feel compelled to spin a narrative suggesting it’s also affecting legal workers. Additionally, some builders might genuinely be unsure about their workers’ legal statuses, leading them to mistakenly believe that the absence of illegal workers equates to a lack of legal ones.

This is why they circulate this narrative. However, there’s insufficient reason to accept it blindly. The strongest evidence available doesn’t support the notion of legal workers being discouraged from showing up to work.