For Day Laborers, Wages Are Booming and Jobs Are Plentiful

Day laborers, typically men who migrated to the U.S. without legal authorization and are paid in cash for jobs that last a few hours to a few days, have long been among the most tenuously employed people in the U.S. Though there are no estimates about how many day laborers might be in the informal market, researchers suspect there are fewer today than in decades past, in part because some people have been able to move to more stable work situations.

Due to a worker shortage in a growing economy, they are enjoying leverage they haven’t before known. Hourly wages of $25 are common, workers in Pomona said, compared with about $15 before the pandemic. And with opportunities plentiful for many day laborers, they are now choosier about what jobs they take.

“The last year has been very good. I’m working three to four days in a row,” said Cristobal Gonzalez Camacho, a 58-year-old painter originally from Mexico who has been in the U.S. for about 25 years, before leaving the Pomona center for a job on a recent morning. “A year ago it was very slow, a day or so a week, but sometimes nothing.”

Many day laborers like Mr. Gonzalez are hired by construction sites that need more hands or by individuals or businesses for repair and improvement projects. Recently, however, many have been tapped to work at e-commerce warehouses overwhelmed by supply-chain backups and high demand before the holidays. Pomona is close to California’s largest concentration of such warehouses, which receive goods from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

“It’s a lot of moving boxes and unloading trucks,” said Mario de Leon Diaz, a 41-year-old from Mexico who said he has been in the U.S. about nine years.

The provisions of laws that allow for the hiring of day laborers vary widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Generally, employers aren’t required to verify a day laborer’s immigration status, as they are for workers on the payroll. Like freelancers, day laborers are typically responsible for reporting their own incomes to federal and state authorities.

Some people and businesses that hire day laborers are reluctant to admit publicly that they hire people who might have entered the country illegally and pay them in cash, making it easy for them to not pay taxes.

Veronica Dubon, who runs a small alternative and holistic healing business out of her home in Pomona, said she routinely hires workers from the center for cleaning jobs, paying at least $25 an hour. She said she tried hiring through apps for gig workers but found limited availability and prices of $50 per hour or more—more than she can afford.

“It’s been a lifesaver for us,” Ms. Dubon said of the day-labor center. “I honestly don’t know if I’d be able to run my business otherwise.”

In addition to serving as safe and legal locations for workers to match with employers, day-labor centers have long offered social services such as food banks. This year, some have added free vaccines and Covid-19 tests.

People who work at day-labor centers say there are times when they can’t find enough people to fill the available jobs. That is in part, they said, because many people who did day labor in the past have been able to find steadier positions.

Ligia Guallpa, executive director of the Brooklyn day labor center Worker’s Justice Project, said some day laborers have become gig workers delivering food and other items, so they can set their own hours and work as often as they want.

Ms. Guallpa said, “They’ve gone from day laborers on the corner to day laborers in the apps.”

Write to Alicia A. Caldwell at Alicia.Caldwell@wsj.com