(This is not an anti-immigration or anti-Latino rant)
I live in CA only a couple of hours from the Mexican border, so all the labor jobs here from car washes and gardening to construction and other labor jobs are done by Latinos. And I might add that the vast majority are honest, hardworking guys.
I’m just wondering about other parts of the USA. My brother in CO says its the same as here in CA, but I talked to someone from Jackson, Mississippi and they said that these jobs are still done by a mix of young Whites and Blacks.
Southern Ontario native here. Mostly we do our own menial labour jobs. You’ll find a decent mix, from Asian, African-American, Caucasian, to Indian. It is more of a case of socio-economic background than anything else. The better economic background you have, the better education and opportunities. Just talking to people in these jobs you get the impression they don’t have the education to do any better. (Of course, you’ll always find exceptions to this rule.)
I must note that if you ever fly through Heathrow in the UK, you’ll notice that nearly everybody employeed in their “maintenance” staff is of Indian origin. Same as if you walk around “downtown” London at night. The City’s entire public works staff, it appears, is of ethnic descent. Though, I must say, it is distrubingly obvious in Heathrow.
Yeah here in Mississippi, most of the unskilled labor is done by a pretty even mix of blacks and whites, usually under 40 years old, except at restaurants, where there are latinos and Russians employed (usually under 30 years old).
Yeah? How do you know this? Why are you even bringing it up? What are you implying? Jk. =D
Here in AL, IMHO statewide whites probably still do the majority of the manual labor jobs simply due to their numbers throughout the state, particularly outside of cities, then black people, then Latinos – whose state-wide population is sharply increasing in both urban areas and the sticks, then Asian people (mostly in LA).
However, I would wager it will not be long before Latinos are doing close to the majority of the manual labor in this state despite their number, as it is apparently trending that way for whatever reason, e.g., from Gulf Shores to Huntsville this past month I’ve driven by everything from high-rise condos to single family housing construction with pretty much all Latino work crews.
SW Arkansas, about ten minutes from Texas. The people I see on the mowers and construction jobs are predominantly Mexican. The rest are fairly well distributed across the ethnic landscape.
I think no matter where you live, those least likely to be able to afford an education are the ones doing manual labor. Here it’s mostly immigrant Latinos, with the 2nd generation or further Latinos having more middle class jobs, like in customer service (the Latinos that speak English and Spanish very well are always preferred). We also have plenty of Latino lawyers, politicians, and business owners, though.
Las Vegas, NV btw. I haven’t gotten around to updating my location.
As far as I can tell, here in suburban northeast Ohio, it’s young white guys and some young black guys (like in their 20’s and early 30’s) doing landscaping. All the construction workers I see around here doing the huge government road job next to my neighborhood are black and white guys in their 30’s and 40’s. People who work at car washes are slack-jawed teenagers.
From what I hear there’s quite a bit of migrant Mexican workers on the next county over doing agricultural work.
I pay a $10 hourly rate for leaf raking / blowing / gutter cleaning, and general yard work around the house.
Anymore it’s getting almost next to impossible to find someone to do it for $10 an hour cash. (which I thought was a fair amount for unskilled non-back breaking labor.)
I kinda wish we had a Mexican border here so there were more workers available. Young spoiled kids today don’t want to do jack shit anymore.
Not like when I was 15 (not to sound like a pa kettle) but I hustled my ass, knocked on doors, cut lawns, raked leaves, shoveld snow, I worked hard to make money.
Southern Maryland - and I guess it’s pretty much a mish-mash here, since I’ve never really noticed any one particular group more than any other. Having a Naval Air Station in this county means we get all types living here over the course of the years, and some probably decide to stay.
I have noticed a bunch of Indian and Pakistani physicians seem to set up practice around here, but that’s not exactly manual labor, is it?
Sublight,
What a coincidence, same thing here! The construction guys usually wear huge-legged pants. I don’t know how wearing MC Hammer’s parachute pants is practical in that job, but, oh well, another mystery of Japanese life. Though, strangely, the roofers on my building at work appear to be Mexican or Central American. I wonder how they like the Japanese-style port-potties.
Philadelphia is a union town. I’m fairly certain the best-paying construction jobs are mostly held by US citizens, although smaller jobs might be done by immigrants. Kitchen help and bar backs are often Mexican, as are the mushroom workers in nearby Kennett Square.
I’m not sure, but I think lots of the landscaping/lawn care is done by independent operators (American citizens of all stripes) or small companies comprising American citizens and noncitizens. There is a growing population of Brazilian immigrants in nearby Riverside, New Jersey, and I think a lot of these newcomers work in construction.
Around here, it is people who used to have higher paying steady jobs that are now being done by people in other countries. Isn’t the global economy great?