There’s an interesting article at Fox Business on the present shortage of high-end construction workers:
However, 50% of companies reported having a difficult time filling both craft and salaried worker positions. Over the coming year, 53% of companies told the AGC that they expect to continue struggling to find qualified applicants. These challenges come despite the fact that 60% of firms reported increasing base pay to retain or recruit professionals and 36% provided incentives and bonuses toward the same end.
and
The construction industry is already experiencing an influx of cash. U.S. construction spending rose to an all-time high of $1.257 trillion in November, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday. On Friday, the U.S. Department of Labor released the employment report for December. showing that the economy added 30,000 construction jobs last month, contributing to a total of 148,000 overall jobs created.
Meanwhile, the construction industry is potentially facing a 1.5 million worker shortage by the year 2020, Whyte said.
They attribute the shortage to the construction industry not being “sexy” enough and travel requirements. While those may be factors, I think other factors are at work as well. There has been relentless propaganda campaign over the period of the last 25 years promoting higher education. And you don’t just graduate from high school as a “craft professional”.
There used to be a pipeline for such workers. An apprentice would become a journeyman would become a master, each paid at a level appropriate for the lifestyle and life responsibilities of people in their teens, their twenties, and older.
I think that what has happened is that the payscales for entry-level jobs have fallen in real terms and the training programs have been eroded. I’d sure like to see some statistics on the relative importance of not “sexy” enough, travel requirements, lower entry-level payscales, unrealistic expectations, advertising, the availability of training programs and loans, and other factors in whatever shortages exist.
Plus High schools used to provide pre-apprentice training in the form of various shop classes. If nothing else, these classes gave students experience in working with their hands and exposure to this kind of work. That is practically nonexistent now. Young people don’t know what they don’t know. With no idea of what hands-on work is really like, they are more susceptible to the college propaganda machine.
As you know, my family has been in the construction business for two generations. My brother, now 66, still runs the business and is successful. But he has no one to pass it on to (his one child is an accountant). He faces a constant problem finding the mid-level foreman and supervisors that are critical to managing worksites, so he has to do a lot of it himself. Most of the actual labor, at least in the Denver area, is now composed of Mexicans. Every subcontractor uses them and they are fantastic hard and diligent workers. My brother doesn’t employ any illegals, but who knows what the subs do.
Mexican labor is taking over the construction industry not only because of the issues described here, but also because there is a lot of skilled labor in Mexico and the construction industry in Mexico is a mess.
Also, I have some knowledge of pipeline workers since I’m a full-time nomad now. Many of these workers live in RV’s with their families and travel from job-to-job, staying anywhere from a few months to a year. There are few other options, especially considering much of the work is in remote areas. It’s not glamorous, it requires an at-home spouse to school the kids, but it pays the bills and provides a good income.
Talk to Tony.
As you can imagine, construction is huge down here. You didn’t mention that many of the skilled trade jobs, and supervisory jobs, pay six figures. That’s not a bogus stat.
To Andys point about Mexicans taking over the construction industry, it certainly true here. Same for agriculture. The available pay pretty much blows a hole in the notion that if employers just paid more, Americans would fill the jobs. The jobs are considered icky, because it’s hot and you have to work, not sit at a computer or on a fork lift in an air conditioned building. I really don’t know what to say about the cultural aspects of the issue. I took shop classes in high school. I worked in a steelmaking shop for a number of years with a freshly minted engineering degree. Talk about icky. It was all a means to an end and I never thought a thing about it.
“My brother doesn’t employ any illegals, but who knows what the subs do.”
No one hires illegals, you see, however their paperwork may have been freshly printed and purchased the day before from an enterprising guy with a printer.
The available pay pretty much blows a hole in the notion that if employers just paid more, Americans would fill the jobs. The jobs are considered icky, because it’s hot and you have to work, not sit at a computer or on a fork lift in an air conditioned building.
And yet, somehow, the country got built before all the damned bosses started importing Mexicans by the truckloads. Hmmm….