Day laborers are a highly vulnerable population, due to their contingent work arrangements, low socioeconomic position, and precarious immigration status. Earlier studies posited day labor as a temporary bridge for recent immigrants to achieve more stable employment, but recent studies have observed increasing duration of residence in the United States among foreign-born day laborers. This article draws on 170 qualitative interviews and a multi-venue, year-long street corner survey of 411 day laborers in the Denver metropolitan area to analyze how duration in the United States affects day laborers’ wages, work, and wage theft experiences. Compared to recent immigrants, foreign-born day laborers with longer duration in the United States, we found, worked fewer hours and had lower total earnings but also had higher hourly wages and lower exposure to wage theft. We draw on qualitative interviews to address whether this pattern represented weathering, negative selection, or greater discernment. Rather than upward or downward mobility, long duration immigrant day labors had more jagged incorporations experiences. Interviews suggest that day laborers draw on experience to mitigate the risk of wage theft but that the value of experience is undercut by the fierce competition of daily recruitment, ultimately highlighting the compounding vulnerabilities facing longer duration and older immigrant day laborers. The article highlights duration as an understudied precarity factor which can adversely impact the economic assimilation of long duration immigrants who persist in contingent markets like day labor.

由于临时工的工作安排、低社会经济地位和不稳定的移民身份，日工是一个非常脆弱的群体。早期的研究将日工作为新移民获得更稳定就业的临时桥梁，但最近的研究发现，外国出生的日工在美国的居住时间有所增加。本文利用对丹佛大都市区 411 名短工的 170 次定性访谈和为期一年的多地点街角调查，分析在美国的持续时间如何影响短工的工资、工作和工资盗窃经历。与新移民相比，在美国工作时间更长的外国出生的短工，我们发现，工作时间更少，总收入更低，但小时工资更高，工资被盗的风险更低。我们利用定性访谈来解决这种模式是否代表风化、负面选择或更大的辨别力。与向上或向下流动不同，长期的移民日工有更多参差不齐的公司经历。访谈表明，日工利用经验来降低工资被盗的风险，但经验的价值被日常招聘的激烈竞争削弱，最终凸显了工期较长和年长的移民日工面临的复合脆弱性。