Society & Frontier risk-off · 1–3 years
A what‑if from the future

What if US homebuilder labor crunch from deportations stalls housing starts?

Removal of undocumented construction crews collapses framing and finishing capacity, lifting build costs and stalling housing starts; builder equities fall as completion timelines blow out and shelter inflation re-accelerates.

22%
our model probability
over 1–3 years
prediction markets — the market's odds
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The butterfly cascade

How this trigger trickles across markets, left → right — the root shock, its first‑order moves, then the ripple effects. Drag any node; tap a market for its real price history.

Resolution timeline — how this probability is moving

Our model's odds (electric blue) over time vs the market's (Polymarket, amber), from the past toward the 1–3 years horizon. Each dot is a real macro event that nudged the probability — green pushed it up, red pushed it down. Tap a dot for the source. Loading the probability audit trail…

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What it would mean

If this plays out, it is a risk-off shock. Removal of undocumented construction crews collapses framing and finishing capacity, lifting build costs and stalling housing starts; builder equities fall as completion timelines blow out and shelter inflation re-accelerates. The trigger decomposes into signed root‑shocks — Consumer spending ▼ · Inflation surprise ▲ · Labor shortage ▲ · Recession signal ▲ · Risk appetite ▼ — which propagate through our causal graph to the markets below.

Methodology. Probability and impact are anchored to history and scored against what actually happens — wins and losses, in public, at Reality Check. Market odds live from Polymarket & Kalshi. By Vikas Singh, Quantitative Strategist. Updated 2026-08-13.