CLCA on Immigration

According to the California Landscape Contractors association, the California?EUR??,,????'?????<https://www.clca.us/immigration/

Because landscaping work involves outdoor manual labor, it is to some extent young person’s work. Yet America has an aging workforce. At the same time, the landscape industry is growing and therefore has a need for more workers, partly because this same aging population tends to enlarge the market for landscaping services. Immigrants, who tend to be young, address this unmet need for younger workers in the landscape industry.

The American native-born workforce is increasingly unlikely to fill less-skilled jobs. Between 1994 and 2004, the proportion of the native-born labor force age 25-44 fell from 63.3 percent to 52.9 percent, while the proportion of native-born workers age 25 and older with a high school diploma or less fell from 44.3 percent to 37.8 percent. The younger workforce is both shrinking and better educated. Given these demographic realities, we need to have a program that allows landscape contractors to utilize immigrant labor when U.S. workers are not available.

Paying higher wages to attract more workers is not the answer. The long-term demographic projections show that job growth will outstrip the supply of workers. It’s not just a matter of offering landscape workers more pay. Supply and demand play a role, but there is an upper limit to how much an employer can charge for their product or service, and thus there is an upper limit to what employers can pay their employees. This is especially true in our trade, where unlicensed operators and underground economy competitors underbid legitimate contractors and thereby keep prices rock bottom low. There really are some jobs that U.S. workers just aren’t willing to do at any reasonable price.