'They're hiding': Construction industry reels as ICE snatches workers

The California construction industry is in crisis as raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Trump administration have decimated the workforce, reported CBS News on Friday evening.

"About 41% of construction workers in California are foreign-born, according to a 2023 analysis from the National Association of Home Builders, a trade group for the housing construction industry," said the report. This comes after a report from the UCLA Anderson Forecast issued a warning about the impact of the deportations on the industry, saying, "For single-family and smaller (non-high rise) multi-family development, the loss of workers installing drywall, flooring, roofing and finishing will directly diminish the level of production."

The issue is not simply the number of workers being deported, but also the number of high-skilled foreign-born laborers who aren't willing to take jobs for fear they'll be caught up in a raid, even a lot of workers who are here legally.

General contractor Jason Pietruszka, who works on housing in Los Angeles and only employs documented workers, had a blunt assessment for CBS.

"We have probably three people on site, four people on site, and normally, we'd have about double, about eight to 10 people. They're hiding. People aren't willing to come to work. If a company has five trucks going out and doing work every single day, and there's two guys per truck, and half their crew doesn't want to come, that's literally three jobs, or two jobs, that can't be performed."

All of this comes as California is struggling to address a historic housing crisis, where decades of underbuilding and restrictive zoning and permitting laws in many high-demand cities have resulted in unaffordable cost of living.

It also comes after a disastrous wildfire system earlier this year wiped out portions of neighborhoods in Los Angeles, including Altadena and Pacific Palisades, destroying around 12,000 homes.