"Do you have work?" a man from Mexico asked in English, a glimmer of hope on his face.

Most of the dozen or so men were still waiting for work late into the morning, and some would likely go home empty-handed, something they said is commonplace these days.

According to a recent Pew Hispanic Center report, a nationwide slump in the construction industry is causing job loss and economic distress among the workers most heavily dependent on the industry: Latino immigrants.

Due primarily to that slump, the unemployment rate for Latinos in the United States rose to 6.5 percent in the first quarter of 2008 from a low of 4.9 percent at the end of 2006.

During this time, the quarterly unemployment rate for non-Latinos has gone up much less dramatically, according to the report, rising to 4.7 percent in the first quarter of this year from 4.4 percent at the end of 2006.

The report, which was drawn from U.S. Census and federal labor data, says the construction industry has in recent years been a mainstay of job growth for Latino workers, providing nearly 300,000 new jobs for them between the first quarters of 2006 and 2007. With the industry in decline, however, Latino workers lost nearly 250,000 jobs in the past year.

"To put it bluntly, Hispanics had a rough time in the labor market in 2007," said Rakesh Kochhar, the report's author, during a teleconference. Kochhar is associate director for research with the Pew Hispanic Center, a Washington, D.C., research organization.

Latino workers have also seen earnings drop. Between the first quarters of 2007 and 2008, median weekly earnings dropped to $485 from $521 for all Latino construction workers, and to $480 from $500 for those who were foreign-born.

Those affected worst are immigrants from Mexico, a group heavily represented in the industry. According to the report, about 221,000 immigrants left construction in 2007. Of these, about 152,000 were immigrants from Mexico.

Outside the Home Depot, a mix of tile workers, landscapers, carpenters and others waited for work that they said has been increasingly scarce.

"Last year was slow, but this year is even slower," said Jose Torres, 47, a legal U.S. resident who left his home in Tijuana, Mexico, at 4 a.m. to arrive at the Home Depot via trolley and bus in hopes of landing landscaping work. "Some of us are here four or five days a week, but we only get to work one day."

Other workers, several of whom commute from Tijuana also, talked about being so desperate that they have accepted jobs paying less than what the job is worth. One man said he recently tiled a bathroom, a $1,500 job, for $500 just to work.

"We're scraping the bottom," said Torres, who used to live in San Diego but moved to Tijuana to be with his wife, who cannot enter legally, and their three children.

San Diego's construction sector, which boomed as real estate prices skyrocketed, has been hit especially hard. More than 15,000 construction jobs have been lost in San Diego since June 2006, said Alan Gin, an economist with the Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate at the University of San Diego.

"Foreclosures have led to huge inventory, and the huge inventory is further repressing prices," Gin said. "Sales are down, therefore developers can't sell any new units. They are not taking out any new building permits."

While the construction decline was the main culprit behind Latino job losses, foreign-born Latino workers also suffered job losses in restaurant, hotel and other industries. Construction industry job losses chiefly affected male workers, while both male and female workers were affected by job losses in eating, drinking and lodging services, according to the report.

For women, most of the job losses occurred in manufacturing and nondurable goods, such as meat-packing, followed by restaurant and hotel jobs.

The report did not take immigration status into account. However, the Pew Hispanic Center has estimated in the past that unauthorized workers account for about 5 percent of the general U.S. labor force, and that they make up a larger percentage - about 12 percent - of the construction work force.

In spite of the job losses, it did not appear that foreign-born Latino workers were pulling up stakes, Kochhar said.

"We did not find signs that they are leaving the U.S. labor market," he said, adding that the immigrants represented in the report data were either becoming re-employed or actively seeking work.

LATINO WORKERS BY THE NUMBERS

3 million: Number of Latinos employed in construction in the first quarter of 2007

2.7 million: Number of Latinos employed in construction in the first quarter of 2008

$521: Median weekly earnings for Latinos in construction, first quarter of 2007

$485: Median weekly earnings for Latinos in construction, first quarter of 2008

Source: Pew Hispanic Center

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