patrick.net

It's never hard to find good people if you are willing to pay them well. I've seen construction sites that were well ran. And I've seen those that employed mostly cheap Mexicans, the kind you see standing in front of Home Depot stores. Latter takes a lot of shortcuts, does a poor job, and I'd recommend avoiding those houses.

There hasn't been any meaningful construction work in over 7 years.
I expected that those that were skilled in those trades have moved on to other careers. I remember down here in South Florida in the 80's through mid 2000's, everyone I knew was one trade in construction or the other. Now I hardly know any Carpenters, Pourers, Electricians, Plumbers, Flooring guys, Painters, Caulkers, Window guys, finishers, roofers. Everyone was in some trade.

I have a neighbor in the neighborhood who is about ten years younger than I am. He is a work at home bottle water distributor salesman, and his younger brother works a night shift at a restaurant. They share a car and are struggling to make ends meet. Back when we had a building industry, those guys would have ran their own jobs, owned a work truck and a new car each. I don't know one single 20 something that is in a trade.

So of course, we're going to need HB1 Visas for skilled Mexican construction workers now.

"skilled Mexican construction worker" was considered an Oxymoron, just ten years ago.