Black Market in Labor

The lead ediorial in the December 14 Los Angeles Times revealed that "the number of recorded workers in legitimate businesses in Los Angeles is lower now than in 1990."

The editorial did not, however, note the scope of the L.A. area's population increase for the decade and a half since 1990. U.S. Census figures show fourteen and half million people living in the L.A.-Riverside-Orange County region in 1990, and two million more than that in 2000. In the five years since, assuming the same rate of growth, the population of the area would have increased to about seventeen and a half million.

Of course, census data only provide a rough estimate, because many illegal immigrants avoid being counted due to fear of deportation.

But even the most inexact estimates reveal the explosive growth on an under-the-rader business sector that operates outside government regulation. These are the restaurants, clothing factories, car washes, beauty parlors, and gardening services that pay no taxes (including sales taxes), ignore health and safety requirements, and often pay less than the minimum wage.

Southern California has been growing faster -- at a rate of 12.7 percent a decade -- than any other metropolitan region in the U.S. except Las Vegas, and illegals from all over the world have been the most significant part of the increase. The illegal immigration and economic desperation noted by David Rieff in his incisive and somewhat prophetic 1992 book, "Los Angeles: Capital of the Third World," has generated a black market in labor which now threatens the survival of legitimate businesses facing unfair competition from the "informal" sector.

The Economic Roundtable and Milken Institute, the sources of the Times editorial, also note the severity of the increased burden on public schools and public health systems stemming from the growth of a black market in labor, as well as widespread mistreatment of workers.

Liberal and progressive Americans have expressed concern over the past few years about slave labor in countries like China, and the spread of child labor throughout the non-industialized world. These are legitimate concerns, but our attention to these critical issues should perhaps be focused more effectively within our own borders, and especially right here in Southern California.