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On any day, The National Day Labor Survey (January 2006) found, about 117,600 workers are working or looking for work as day laborers in the United States.

• 42 percent of day laborers are in the West
• 23 percent are in the East
• 18 percent are in the Southwest
• 12 percent are in the South
• 4 percent are in the Midwest

The National Day Labor Study – underwritten by The Ford Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, The Community Foundation for the National Capital Region’s Washington Area Partnership for Immigrants and UCLA’s Center for the Study of Urban Poverty – is a snapshot of this remarkably fluid American labor market.

Some Details:

• 49 percent of day-labor jobs are performed for homeowners; 43 percent for construction contractors
• 69 percent of day laborers report being hired multiple times by the same employer
• 79 percent of day labor hiring sites are informal – in front of businesses, home improvement stores, gas stations and busy streets corners
• 21 percent of day laborers look for work at day-labor centers
• 83 percent of day laborers rely on day-labor as their only source of income
• 70 percent look for work five or more days a week
• 40 percent of day laborers have lived in the United States more than six years
• 74 percent have worked in the day-labor market less than three years
• 78 percent say they learned about the informal day-labor market after migrating the United States

• The median rate for day laborers is $10 per hour
• 22 percent of day-labor jobs pay between $7 and $10 dollars an hour
• 46 percent pay $10 - $12 per hour
• 25 percent pay more than $12 per hour – usually to skilled electricians, plumbers and the like
• In peak working months the median income of day laborers is $1400. In slow months the median income drops below $500
• 57 percent of day laborers have held permanent jobs in the United States
• 86 percent are looking for permanent employment
• 75 percent of day laborers are undocumented migrants
• 59 percent of day laborers were born in Mexico
• 28 percent in Central America
• 7 percent in the United States
• 41 percent of day laborers say they are married
• 36 percent say they have never been married
• 7 percent say they are divorced
• 52 percent of day laborers report attending church regularly

The Bible doesn’t talk about corporations per se – the corporation being a latter day legal construct. Consequently, much of what we say about commerce on the corporate scale is extrapolated from what the Bible says about other forms of commerce.

We don’t have to do much extrapolating when it comes to day-labor:

Do not hold back the wages of a hired man overnight.

– Leviticus 19:13

Do not take advantage of a hired man who is poor and needy, whether he is a brother Israelite or an alien living in one of your towns. Pay him his wages each day before sunset, because he is poor and is counting on it. Otherwise he may cry to the LORD against you, and you will be guilty of sin.

– Deuteronomy 24:14-15

For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire men to work in his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

About the third hour he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, "You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right" So they went.

He went out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour and did the same thing. About the eleventh hour he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, "Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?"

“Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.

He said to them, "You also go and work in my vineyard."

When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first."

The workers who were hired about the eleventh hour came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. "These men who were hired last worked only one hour," they said, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day."

But he answered one of them, "Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?"

So the last will be first, and the first will be last.

– Matthew 20:1-16

Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.

– James 5:1-4

In these days when U.S. policy-makers consider how the law ought to regard undocumented workers, we wish for a wider conversation to address the status and contribution of the working poor – underemployed workers and day laborers; citizens, immigants and temporary residents among them – who bear God’s image as much as any human, and whom we dishonor at our individual and collective peril.