[pariya]

Speaking from the experience of someone who has hired general heavy labor and skilled trades... This has literally existed since the gold rush, chances are 60-80% of the labor involved in building your house came from an organization like this. They are a unique niche of staffing agencies that only staff same day labor. Many of organizations are nation-wide. Also, lots of skilled workers ask to be paid in cash, so they wouldn’t want a paper trail anyway... you pay 50% upfront and 50% when the job is done to spec. Just doing a few jobs on Craigslist and hiring some laborors won’t make you in any way even close to expert enough to tackle this field.

[pariya]

Correction you can also hire them for weeks at a time. Onus for workers comp, etc is on the agency.