[elfman2]

"Lured by jobs paying $15 to $17 an hour,.."

I suspect that it’s a challenge to find a skilled (and sober) Americans to do construction for $17 an hour, much less relocate to NO. 10 years ago, I was told that the illegals hanging out in front of Home Depot in Santa Monica turned down anything under $10 per hour

[KC_for_Freedom]

Actually this is near what freelancers will take, and there is always bonus and chances to negotiate for more. If $15 -$17 is entry level, there are higher salaries to be had.

[Condor51]

***I suspect that it’s a challenge to find a skilled (and sober) Americans to do construction for $17 an hour, much less relocate to NO.****

Actually $17/hr in N.O. is pretty good because their cost of living is very low.

I found a website a while back that did the wage equivalent calcs and N.O. is about 50% of Chicago and 74% of Manhattan.

As such that'd be $34 an hour in Chicago. That's MORE than pretty good, you don't go hungry by any means on $1340 a week.

An aside, that's why I thought it was stoo-pid of the dems and unions to be whining about Dubya waiving the prevailing wage laws. Union workers who go down there for the big projects will be making a killing.