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

The first place where you actually feel

that implications of an economic crisis is at a day labor 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 that they say the same day that they announce

there is an economic downturn,

you see that decreasing the number of jobs

that they labor 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

Endelan the National Day Labor Organizing Network.

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

day laborers, or harnelleros 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 labors are also the canaries in the coal mine when it comes to anti-immigrant

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