Pablo Avarado always has a front-row seat economic crises.

The first place where you actually feel the implications of an economic crisis is at a day-laborer corner.

The corner. The place where day laborers, often Latino, often immigrant, often undocumented,

find employment by the job, usually yard worker construction.

And immediately, the same day that they announced there is an economic downturn,

you see that decreasing the number of jobs that they labor a corner.

So corners that were getting 30, 35, 20 jobs a day are now getting one, two, three.

When you get five, that's a plus.

Pablo used to work as a day laborer.

Now he's the co-executive director of Endlon, the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

Hanging on at the racialized bottom rungs of the American labor market, day laborers,

or horneleros in Spanish, are the canaries in the coal mine of American capitalism,

often hired by middle-class families who have disposable income.

When there's an economic downturn, families, you know, they become more protective of that disposable income.

Day laborers are also the canaries in the coal mine when it comes to anti-immigrant politics.

Looking for work on the corners or in Home Depot parking lots, they're highly visible, subject to attack first.

So even in normal times, day laborers face some of the worst exploitation of any workers.

Wage theft, dangerous conditions, and more generally precarity.

No steady job, no steady boss, no union.

Even within labor circles, they face discrimination.

I have been mocked for dedicating my life to organizing day laborers because there is a segment

of folks in our society that sees day laborers as undesirable individual, those who stand

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