On illegals - most are NOT off the books, they are ON THE BOOKS with phony documentation. That's the way it is everywhere EXCEPT for cash-day-labor which is a tiny part of the pie.

Why do they (employers) put them on the books? So they can stay clean with the IRS & fully comply with FICA & SS reporting. This stuff gets checked & double checked. People go to jail because of this 'mistakes' here.

Why don't they get caught hiring illegals with forged papers? Because no one looks at that - very few INS visits. INS & IRS don't even know the other exists.

Lotsa IRS scrutiny & very little INS scrutiny means forged papers rule. Employers don't ask, the documented undocumented don't tell.

That isn't to say there aren't some second & third tier illegal cash-day labor subs on these sites - there undoubtedly are, just not all that many compared to the 'legal illegals'.

This is so common in mfg'ing as to be almost laughable.

My guess is unless average people who know what is going on 'squeal' to INS they won't get caught, ever...

The bigger operations only hire 'documented' workers & don't check carefully... show me quick, good you have papers, get to work. After that it's all 'on the book'.

So unless somebody from INS shows up and actually checks the papers vs official records (at say IRS)... they are all 'legal'.

Its almost like 'call your own foul'.

I doubt the employment numbers will tell us much about what's going on here regarding legal/illegal hires & UE rates.

One more tidbit I forgot... although While I can't lay myself off... I sure as hell don't have to pay myself either.

Everyone in small biz like me understands this - declining revenue but costs NOT declining or not as fast means little or no paycheck... ie work & work hard but work for little or nothing... that's phase one. Phase two, three, etc follow soon enough... months later it shows up in the 'numbers'... by then its too late even for crying.

My guess is that's what's going behind the numbers.

Dryfly-

I would like to politely disagree with you regarding illegals being "on the books" in construction. In my recent line of work, I was intimately involved with the accounting of several public and private homebuilders and their contractors. And I can assure you that the majority of the illegals are not on the books.

I have also been involved with manufacturers, and you are correct, most of their illegals are on the books. This makes sense, as they have to train their employees and would like them to stick around for a while. Quite humorous when you look at the payroll register and there are 3 or 4 people with the same first and last name, and their SS numbers are only different by one digit.

regarding dryfly's comments on "legal illegals". My son works at a meat packing plant. The company dutifly checks all required documents, puts the people to work and calls it good enough. My son has looked at some of those documents as well as talked to the people using them. Like dryfly says, they won't pass any inspection that actually tried to verify authenticity. 900 workers all coming from the same street in Texas? Please!

This is one more joy of the 'ownership society'... you get complete ownership of your own personal hell.

that's a great line dryfly.

The housing slump has a wide reach. As Roubini noted, "the employment effects of housing are serious; up to 30% of the employment growth in the last three years was due directly and indirectly to housing. The direct effects are job lost in construction, building materials, real estate brokers and sales agents, and employees of the mortgage finance industry. The indirect effects imply that the role of housing is even larger than 30%. The housing boom led to a boom in consumer durables spending on home appliances and furniture."

As a mortgage lender who jumped from the investment train to the housing train, there is no other train to jump on. Business capital spending? To build inventory for broke consumers?

War historically has been a way to get out of recession. You're suppose to take the spoils of victory. Instead, we run up $300B in deficit and cut taxes, which further increases our debt. Who needs enemies, we have our gov't.