Long ago I spent 10 years in
Maricopa County in AZ.

Every fall the population grew
by 125,000. ( Just in one county)

Now I am being told that number is 200,000.

Back then you could find many dozens of
day workers waiting to paint, lay Crete,
roof, drywall, move you and all your belongings,
Dig a trench, you name it.

Now, I am being told that although
Day labor is still available, they have gone
"underground".

Wait times for a new bath or kitchen reconstruction
can be five weeks out. no licence ,ins.or bonding involved.

Just Pedro and his three buddies and a truck.

And most of the legit companies have more than doubled the prices.

Worth it

Short term pain, long term gain.

Prices for all construction/ handy man stuff have gone through the roof as of late, and being in AZ myself, it appears the southwest costs are rising higher and faster than the rest of the country.
I will say there are a lot of competent hard working immigrants around doing work, but not to turn this political, a lot of the rough labor force was illegals and they have disappeared in a lot of cases.
Even at higher cost a licensed individual would be my choice. ( although I have heard horror stories about them too)

Being in the medical business, a lot of snow birds ( and people relocating from larger urban areas to our smallish town) do very little to no planning regarding healthcare and are astonished to discover we don’t have multiple subspecialists available with prompt appointments.

I have often heard people state that non tax paying illegal immigrants were just in the US to do "jobs that americans dont want"

That is actually not true. American do not want those jobs at a wage competitive with a person who does not participate in society and pay the same taxes.

The increase in cost is reflective of having to pay wages required to hire citizens.

The short term labor shortage is actually a shortage of cheap imported labor to set the wage at an artificially low level.

quote:

Now I am being told that number is 200,000.

Don’t know about growth rate but the current pop is almost 5 million.

Linkage

I love scottsdale, it's just awesome place I have been down there when it was 112 degrees moving my daughter and I just don't know how anyone could work in that heat, we moved her stuff in over several days as we could only do it in short burst. I can surely understand why people only visit in the winter.

quote:

Originally posted by XLT:
I love scottsdale, it's just awesome place I have been down there when it was 112 degrees moving my daughter and I just don't know how anyone could work in that heat, we moved her stuff in over several days as we could only do it in short burst. I can surely understand why people only visit in the winter.

In Yuma people start work at 3 or 4 in the morning and knock off for the day around noon

The first three years that I drove a delivery truck, I didn't have air
conditioner , it wasn't uncommon at all for cab
temps to reach 130 degrees by
2: p.m.
I was hating the cab over design.

Construction is like ag - except, TMK, many foreign workers in ag have visas.

It’s not about the wage - construction has been paying very well for at least the last 10 years - it’s about skill set/culture.

Dim Wit, has been vaping synthetic “stuff” non stop since he was 12, and has never broken a sweat, will not hammer a board at any price.

He cannot.

Anymore than he can pick up a 43# crate at a plant and put it on a pallet. Or only put clean dishes on the rack after he washes them.
Or not turn valves on a machine which has not been trained on, and has been explicitly instructed not to touch.

5th grade math*, and enough awareness to not walk in front of a fork lift, is incredibly rare. The ability is actually exert moderate effort for 15 minutes straight, is even more so. (And I mean moderate. EG, stack a pallet of 43# crates, in the AC, in less than 15 minutes.)

*Really, not even that, since we encourage using a calculator on the test.