State prevailing wage laws and construction labor markets

State prevailing wage laws are the subject of much public policy debate in state legislatures throughout the country. These debates and most research on this subject focus primarily upon the relationship between these laws and the cost of public construction. Comparatively little is known about how repeal reshapes construction labor markets. The repeal of some state laws mostly in the 1980s has provided researchers with a natural experiment where construction labor markets in states that eliminated their law can be compared to the same markets in states that did not repeal or enact these laws. Using data collected in the Current Population Survey between 1977 and 2002 this dissertation takes advantage of this natural experiment to examine how repeal affects union density, hourly wages, benefits coverage, and the accumulation of human capital in the construction labor market. I also examine how the effect of repeal on each of these factors differs by race and construction occupation. Repeal on average lowers union density, average wages, rates of coverage by pension and/or health insurance, and the quantity of human capital. Relatively less-skilled construction occupations are the primary group of workers for whom hourly wages and the level of human capital decline the most. Less-skilled but unionized construction occupations do not lose relative to their higher-skilled unionized counterparts in terms of wages, but they do experience larger declines in union density as a result of repeal. Also related to repeal, less-skilled nonunion workers experience a decrease in their hourly wages relative to higher-skilled nonunion workers. Although there is no evidence that Black construction workers gained in terms of hourly wages or benefits coverage as a result of repeal, their relative concentration in less-skilled construction unions lead to a disproportionate decline in Black union density.