A new survey provides some important details about day laborers in California. The story from KPBS reporter Alan Ray.
Perhaps the biggest surprise in the survey by the Public Policy Institute of California is that day laborers are a tiny fraction of the California workforce -- only about 40,000, which is only about one per cent of the work force.
About two-thirds of them are in the country illegally. The number who actually stand on street corners looking for work turns out to be just 200ths of one per cent of the work force.
The PPIC study finds the typical day laborer is a poorly educated foreign-born man, who's about 34 years old. The North County Times reports that about 68 percent are from Mexico, 29 percent are from other Latin countries, and about 3 percent were born in the U.S.
The average pay for a day laborer is just over $11 an hour -- which is roughly double the minimum wage. The average work-week is about 23 hours.
The Public Policy Institute says it collected the data for its report from the National Day Labor Survey of 2004, but anti-immigrant groups say the real number of illegal day laborers is much higher.
