Housing collapse hits Latino labor

The end of South Florida’s construction boom has meant a dearth of available jobs for the ranks of day laborers who once worked steadily throughout the area. Workers, many of them from Mexico and Latin American countries, were able to work six-day weeks at $100 a day, but now find opportunities scarce. About 21,000 of the estimated 165,000 building jobs in the region created by the building boom have dried up since 2006, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. The Pew Hispanic Center reports that Hispanic laborers have lost about 250,000 jobs nationwide in the last year.