The mandated wage rate tax payers pay for a common laborer in California is about $54.00 an hour !
https://www.dir.ca.gov/OPRL/2019-1/PWD/Determinations/Northern/NC-023-102-1.pdf
Why should tax payers from other states have to subsidize those costs ?
What many probably don’t know is the “Prevailing Wage Rates” in many other states are very similar in over the top and that only tells half of the cost story.
Let’s take a Group 1 Laborer working to cut and drill on the spillway repair. This is hard dirty work and he gets a base wage of 31.01 before taxes. Granted his benefits that the employer pays the Union bring his hourly cost to 54.96 but that is hardly the end of the cost to the employers. If he works 42 weeks a year, that’s about $52,096 before taxes which are about 8% higher in CA than the average, so he takes home about 68% of that — say $35,425 after taxes or an average of $2952 take home a month after taxes. I use 42 to indicate that construction is always stop-start and seasonal Many guys work more weeks than 42 but there are many that work less.
Now let’s go back and also look at what is referred to a Labor Burden or Payroll, Taxes and Insurance on that total base cost to employer. To that $54.96 is added the Employer’s cost for Social Security Contribution, Unemployment Insurance Cost, Work Compensation Cost and similar direct cost against each hour’s labor. I know this will surprise many people but that cost is a variable running from 40% to 80% of the base wage. For a common laborer doing demo on a Damn repair in central CA I would guess that its about 48% or 14.88 per hour on top of the base wage of 31.01 plus the Benefits. So to the Base wage and Benefits total of 54.96 you have to add 14.88 to get the true raw COST to the demolition subcontractor. As the sub will mark up that wage by 10% on commercial work and the General contractor’s mark-up will be about 4.5% for this type of work, the Owner is paying about $80.26 for that one hour of demolition labor, not the 54 you mention and in all states it can be nearly as high.
This is a quick down and dirty guesstimate but I have run projects of over 50 million in many locations including central California and spent the last thirty years competing with top 50 Contractors like Kiewit who did the dam repair.