Job offers have declined by more than 60 percent at day labor sites, keeping would-be workers waiting along the roadways at hiring halls according to Sonoma County labor organizers. Many go weeks without work and income, they said.

The unemployment of day laborers is another reflection of the economic slowdown in Sonoma County. Temporary jobs remain undone by those who once sought quick help, and traditional employers of day laborers in landscaping and construction aren’t hiring because there are fewer jobs to complete.

Nathan Acu?????a, director of the Healdsburg (Calif.) Day Labor Center, said a year ago most of his laborers would get picked up for odd jobs, but now only two out of 50 will get work on any given day.

He said the hiring slowdown started when gas hit $3.50 a gallon, and the extra work that day laborers perform, such as building fences, decks or patios, suddenly ceased.

Laborer Ismael Lopez said the scariest thing about not having work now is that summer is usually the busiest time for temporary laborers. When winter rolls around, job opportunities evaporate.

“I’m thinking of returning to Honduras,” Lopez said in Spanish. “I am depressed and can’t sleep because it has been five months since I last sent my family a penny.” He said he earns about $300 a month, just enough to pay $250 in rent and pay for food.

If he fails to make August rent, he said, he will look for a place to sleep on the streets.

Organizers said they are seeing workers go days without food and become homeless, with some taking shelter under bridges.

Many laborers at the Fulton, Calif. hiring site said they are weighing returning to Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.

But first they must earn enough to buy a plane ticket.

Many of the day laborers are illegal immigrants, fueling the debate about whether they’ll leave the country if they can’t find jobs.

Labor organizers said the workers are essential to sustaining industries such as wine, agriculture, fast food and hotel services such as housekeeping.

“Even though the economy is the way it is, the workers are the ones who do the work that provide food on our tables,” said Leticia Romero, community organizer for the Fulton hiring site. “What would happen if nobody did those types of jobs?”

Daniel Mendoza of Vera-cruz, Mexico, said he is learning to be patient after months of unsteady work that has made it impossible to send remittances to his wife and children, let alone pay $200 in rent on a home he shares with 10 other immigrants.

“In Mexico, I was told that the United States was full of opportunities,” he said. “I came here with that illusion.”

Money wired home by Mexicans living outside the country, most of them working in the United States, totaled $11.6 billion through the first six months of the year, according to figures released last week by the Bank of Mexico.

That’s down 2.2 percent from the same period last year—the longest sustained drop since Bank of Mexico began tracking the flow in the mid-1990s.

The decline reflects tougher border enforcement and the drop in the U.S. construction industry, which employs one in five Mexican immigrants.

Acu?????a said more workers are waiting in public spaces such as parks, plazas and street corners hoping to increase their chances of getting work.

“They have to beg, jump and pray for a job without any dignity,” Acu?????a said. “They know that if they go to the park, somebody will offer them a $5- or $6-an-hour job. It’s not a lot, but that’s better than nothing.”