"I design homes and not one I've done in six years are for "average income" Americans, except for a replacement in a burnout case (1).
Not one home I've done in the past six years has been less than $200k."
Around here, even a townhouse in a "crime ridden neighborhood" will cost $220K. The average income is also similarly high.
Were I to base my ideas of what sort of jobs Americans do and do not do on this (skewed) area, yes, I would have to come to the conclusion that Americans don't want to do "those sorts of jobs".
I might also come to the conclusion, based on what I see getting built around here, that Americans are indeed moving to larger houses.
But I know full well that Northern Virginia isn't like the rest of the country.
Home construction costs in my area typically run $100+ psf, unless you get a contractor who wants to make a career out of your project. Mobile castles will cost you about half that. Land price is low, many former farmers want $10-12g /acre or more for land with no amenities.
I've not had any clients of less than 2000 sf in a LONG time, but like your area's tilted to the high end, mine is tilted to the other extreme and wages are low.
As we say here, "If you need anything larger than a big Cocola, you've gotta go out of the county to get it."
Everything we get in this county is "imported"...;-)
Hey neighbor - I'm here in the becoming-Balkanized No. VA area, too.
Fairfax for me. You?
As to homes, I don't think the illegals are in them; they're living in all the apartments that have been vacated by the upwardly-mobile Caucasians, Blacks, and Indians & Asians(H1-B's mostly).
But H1-B is another topic. One that involves the removal of middle-class Americans from their jobs: engineering and programming positions because Hi Tech & S/W companies use cheaper technical labor, pay them half of what a comparable American would earn, and work them 60-70 hours/week, including all that free overtime.
I've come to the conclusion that the only sector of the American economy that isn't under onslaught from labor abroad are the independently rich, who aren't really IN the labor market at all. The rest of us? There is some foreigner out there, illegal or on a Congressional-mandated "technical guest worker VISA" who wants OUR jobs.
For those who argue that our Grandparents and G-Grandparents came here for the "same" reason as these illegals and technical guest workers on "temporary" VISAs, I say, "Bah humbug". They came here to escape religious or political persecution where they lived, and they DIDN'T TAKE ANYONE'S JOB AWAY FROM THEM! In fact, most of them created their positions, or went to work where there was no competition from anyone else but a market screaming for more labor.
Sheesh - these folks like bayourod, Dane, hchutch (and the former "Advocado" who has probably come back as one of the previously mentioned!) and the other "pro Hispanic invasion" types make it sound like we are keeping entrepeneurs out of our Country, when nothing could be further from the truth. We are simply arguing for the LEGAL immigration process, instead of the hordes of uneducated, unskilled, sick, and/or pregnant, overruning our Southern border, and then abusing our healthcare and education and social welfare systems once they get here.