Shortage of Mexican workers is hurting U.S. businesses
Many business owners who rely on low-skilled labor say the real trouble is too few Mexicans heading north, not too many. “Without Mexican labor our industry is at a standstill,” says Nelson Braddy Jr., the owner of King of Texas Roofing Co., which is helping build a sprawling new Toyota North American headquarters in a Dallas suburb. He says he would hire 60 roofers right away if he could find them. “It’s the worst I have seen in my career,” he adds.
The struggle to find Mexican workers(3:56) Immigration from Mexico was a hot-button issue on the presidential campaign trail. But some business owners, like Joe Hargrave, are struggling to hire enough staff because of a shortage of workers from Mexico.
Annual inflows of undocumented immigrants from Mexico have slowed to about 100,000 a year since 2009, from about 350,000 a year in the mid-2000s and more than half a million in the late 1990s and early 2000s, estimates the Pew Research Center. Apprehensions by the U.S. Border Patrol of Mexicans and other foreigners entering illegally declined to 337,117 last year, the least since 1971.
“Mass migration from Mexico is over,” says Pia Orrenius, senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, who studies migration. “Low-skilled labor will never be as plentiful again.”
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