Nope.. correct.

Posted on: April 20, 2017 at 12:13:25 CT

http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/low-paid-illegal-work-force-has-little-impact-on-prices/

.......How does all that illegal labor affect the price you pay for a new house?


The National Association of Home Builders pegs labor’s share of the cost of a new home at 20 to 25 percent. For a typical U.S. single-family home that sold for $298,412 in 2002, then, about $68,000 went for construction labor. If Passell’s estimates are correct, around 14 percent of those workers would be illegal.


But illegal workers generally are less skilled than legal ones, points out Barry Chiswick, an economist at the University of Illinois, Chicago, who has studied illegal immigration for decades. You’re more likely to find illegal drywallers or painters, say, than illegal electricians or plumbers.


Since higher-skilled workers earn more than less-skilled ones, Chiswick said, the “illegal share” of construction labor costs — and, by extension, the wages illegal workers receive — will be smaller than their numbers would suggest. But even if illegal workers make only half as much as legal workers, that would work out to about $5,000, or about 1.6 percent of that “typical” home’s sale price.


If the supply of illegal workers were cut off, wages for those low-skilled jobs presumably would have to rise enough to attract legal workers into them. If, hypothetically, wage levels rose by a third, that would either add around $1,600 to the cost of the typical house or shave half a percentage point off the builder’s 12 percent average profit margin.


“If I’m buying just one home, there’s not that big an impact,” Chiswick said. “But if I’m building a lot of homes and I can save a few thousand on each one…. “