Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg recently suggested that there are too many native-born whites working in construction, and that more of these jobs should go to American minorities.
Actually it is immigrants, legal and illegal, who are overrepresented in construction. They comprise 17 percent of the total labor force, while holding 29 percent of construction jobs. An estimated 1.1 million foreign-born construction workers are illegal aliens.
Native-born whites are 56 percent of the total labor force, but they are just 50 percent of construction workers. Native-born blacks are 10 percent of the labor force, but only five percent of workers doing construction.
The fact that more than 70 percent of construction workers are native-born is proof that this is not a kind of work that Americans “refuse to do.” But competition from immigrants reduces the opportunities of Americans who would like to enter the field, while lowering wages of Americans already working in construction.
Read more at cis.org