Insights from measuring the prevalence of labor trafficking in Houston’s construction industry

January 7, 2025

| Kelly Jedd McKenzie and Mary Mueggenborg

Insights From Measuring the Prevalence of Labor Trafficking in Houston's Construction Industry

Human trafficking is a serious societal problem, and often described as a hidden crime. The lack of data available to estimate the true prevalence of the problem makes it difficult to effectively address through prevention and intervention efforts. One type of human trafficking, labor trafficking, is defined as the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion. Although labor trafficking can occur in any labor sector, research demonstrates that construction is consistently among the top industries for identified labor trafficking cases. OPRE’s Human Trafficking Policy and Research Analyses Project (HTPRAP) provided the opportunity to explore this issue with a study of the prevalence of labor trafficking within the construction industry in Houston, TX. This study is based on surveys of 903 construction workers in Houston, TX, between August 2022 and August 2023. While the primary goal of the project was to advance knowledge of promising methods for estimating human trafficking prevalence in the United States by field testing at least two methods of prevalence estimation, it also allows for a deeper understanding of the experiences of labor trafficking among construction workers, and potential risk and protective factors for exploitation.

Basic Statistics

HTPRAP found that:

22.3% of workers had experienced labor trafficking in construction in their lifetime.
13.2% had experienced labor trafficking within the past two years.
4.2% had experienced or were experiencing labor trafficking in their current job.
42% reported experiencing other labor abuses in their work in construction within their lifetime that, while exploitative, did not meet the threshold of labor trafficking.

What does exploitation look like for construction workers? The most common forms of exploitation included working without a contract (38%), being deceived during recruitment about working and living conditions (30%), paying recruitment fees (18%), and being made to work long and unusual hours without adequate compensation (17%). While these less serious forms of abuse seem to be the most common, there are still meaningful numbers of workers experiencing more serious forms of abuse, with 13% reporting having their pay withheld, 13% being deceived during recruitment about the work they would be doing, and 8% being subjected to psychological or emotional abuse.

Trafficking was distinguished from other forms of labor exploitation by accounting for both the severity and the number of types of exploitation that an individual experienced. Each survey item was classified according to six different domains and assigned a level of either medium or strong. An individual was coded as having experienced trafficking if they met any one of the following criteria:

They indicated experiencing a lack of freedom of movement or communication.
They indicated experiencing two or more strong trafficking indicators from different categories.
They indicated experiencing one strong indicator and at least three medium indicators in any category.

Risk and Protective Factors

This study did not find any individual characteristics that were significantly associated with either increased or decreased risk for experiencing labor trafficking or other forms of abuse. While there were findings suggesting that individuals with cognitive or physical disabilities may be more susceptible to labor trafficking, the small number of individuals with disabilities in this sample meant that this finding did not reach statistical significance.

One employment experience was found to be significantly associated with a higher risk for workers: working during clean-up and reconstruction efforts after a natural disaster. For example, lifetime labor trafficking was 15.8% for workers who did not have experience working in construction post-disaster compared to 32.3% for those who did. This finding is in keeping with existing anecdotal evidence that speaks to the increased risk for workers who are involved in recovery and reconstruction efforts after a natural disaster. This finding points the way for future research to more thoroughly examine this relationship and suggests pathways for decreasing risk.

Publications

Labor Trafficking and Other Labor Abuse in Houston’s Construction Industry

Labor Trafficking in Construction During the Recovery and Reconstruction from a Natural Disaster

Risk and Protective Factors for Experiencing Labor Trafficking and Other Labor Abuse in the Construction Industry

Measuring Human Trafficking Prevalence in Construction: A Field Test of Multiple Estimation Methods Final Report

Authors

Kelly Jedd McKenzie is a Senior Social Science Research Analyst in OPRE's Division of Family Strengthening. Mary Mueggenborg is a Senior Social Science Research Analyst in OPRE's Division of Child and Family Development.

Types:

Blog

ACF Issues:

Human Trafficking

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