[jocon307]

Americans won't do construction work for $24.00 an hour now? But we got meth-heads and crack-heads galore?

Something is wrong.

[Katya]

He earns that much because he's legal(now). An illegal with no documentation probably gets paid in the range of $11 to $ 15 per hour cash, though many get fake soc #'s and have state and federal taxes withheld too.
However, it is true that in the DC area it's very difficult to find Americans who want to do manual labor. Unbelievably many teens prefer lower paying fast food jobs to outside work. Even housecleaning work, is only done by hispanic women now. It used to be you saw other minorities and poorer white women doing cleaning....no more.