For Americans and Canadians willing to get their hands dirty and work hard, the prospects of a stable, well-paying career have never been rosier. An army of aging construction workers will retire over the next few years. Serious shortages of skilled labor are already evident today and projected to increase in the next seven years. This, and a few other reasons, will offer a myriad of opportunities for good jobs with good pay.
Too many
Americans are unnecessarily either unemployed or under-employed:
“Employers
across industries and regions have complained for years about a lack of skilled
workers, and their complaints are borne out in U.S. employment data. In July
(2015), the number of job postings reached its highest level ever, at 5.8
million, and the unemployment rate was comfortably below the post-World War II
average. But, at the same time, over 17 million Americans are either
unemployed, not working but interested in finding work, or doing part-time work
but aspiring to full-time work …… The fault appears to be diffused: Employers
expect qualified workers to be available on demand, most educators have only a
vague understanding of the job market, and policymakers propose merely
incremental improvements to a system that is wholly outdated.”
Fortune magazine provides a good overview of
the issues:
---- “We’ve
heard plenty about America’s skills gap across the tech industry, but a skills
gap is also hobbling construction — and it’s delaying building projects,
shrinking building inventories, and inflating the cost of homes and
home-related projects. The knowledge and skills necessary to repair our
toilets, install our furnaces and build our houses are dying on the vine. And,
unless we want our grandkids growing up in primeval teepees, we need to work quickly
to fix it.”
---- “Without
skilled workers to replenish a diminishing skilled labor workforce, housing
prices will continue to rise, housing inventories will continue to fall, and
we’ll pay a growing premium for even the smallest home repairs (until there’s
nobody left who knows how to complete them). So, whatever we do to address the
skilled labor shortage, it’s imperative that we do something — and that we do
something soon. Skilled labor has reached a breaking point, and if we continue
to do nothing, our houses — so long as we can afford to keep them — will
literally fall to pieces.”
The
Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) is the leading association for
the construction industry in the US, representing more than 26,000 firms. The
organization recently developed a Workforce Development Plan because of serious
concerns over future shortages of skilled workers. In the introduction they
state:
“As the construction
industry emerges from a severe downturn that
began more than eight years ago, many
firms report having
a hard time
finding enough skilled
workers to fill
key positions. These workforce shortages may at first seem
counter intuitive for an industry that was forced to lay off more than 2
million workers since 2006. However,
these shortages are the consequence of a series of policy, education,
demographic and economic factors that have decimated the once robust education
pipeline for training new construction workers.
“The lack
of a sufficient
number of secondary-school career
and technical education
training programs across the
country means that
as the construction
industry expands to
meet growing demand, an
increasing number of
firms will have
a hard time
finding skilled workers.
Left unaddressed, these shortages
will ultimately undermine
the industry’s recovery
and impact broader economic
growth as staffing
shortages lead to
construction delays.”
The National
Association of Home Builders conducted a detailed survey of its members on the
availability of workers and sub-contractors covering the different trades
(electricians, plumbers, carpenters etc.) One of the questions was:
Indicate if labor shortages over the past 12 months
have had any of the following effects on your business.
The results:
----66% were
forced to pay higher wages/subcontractor bids
----61% were
forced to raise home prices
----58% had
problems in completing projects on time
----31% were
forced to
seek labor/subcontractors from wider geography
----26% said
some projects were unprofitable
----23% were
forced to turn down some projects
Bloomberg Businessweek offered an alarming analysis of the
surprising trends:
“Futurists
have been saying for a while that the U.S. is hurtling toward a jobless
economy, with driverless long-haul trucks and cashier-free brick-and-mortar
Amazon stores. Someday, maybe. Right now the problem isn’t too many workers who
can’t find jobs. It’s too many jobs that can’t find workers.
“The U.S.
economy is going through a sea change in which the main constraint isn’t demand
but supply. There’s plenty of consumer demand for goods and services, but
companies lack the workers to satisfy it. Workers, in turn, don’t have the
tools they need to do their jobs, because business investment in modern
machines, software, and buildings has been weak. Government is also to blame:
Congested roads, bridges, and ports are evidence of chronic public underinvestment
in the infrastructure that supports growth. ‘We’ve moved from a period of
cyclical, demand-side recovery to structural, supply-side stagnation,’ says
Robert Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation
Foundation (ITIF).”
HomeAdvisor is
a nationwide digital home services marketplace providing homeowners with tools
and resources for their home repair, maintenance and improvement projects. Their
exhaustive report entitled “The Skilled Labor Shortage: Where is the Next
Generation of Craftsmen?” spelled out some of the impending problems:
“Construction
is expected to add jobs at the second-fastest rate among U.S. industries
between 2014 and 2024, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics forecasts, but
business owners are struggling to fill open positions. Indeed, while half of
HomeAdvisor survey respondents plan to hire one to three skilled laborers in
the next 12 months, 76 percent of them feel it will be hard to find those new
employees. In all, 93 percent of HomeAdvisor survey respondents expressed
belief that their businesses would grow in the next 12 months if not for hiring
challenges.”
Negative
perceptions of the industry are a major hindrance in attracting young people:
“As Kimmel
& Associates, an executive recruiting firm specializing in the skilled
labor trade, suggests: Many young people may not want to do the ‘dirty work’
associated with skilled labor jobs. ‘The problem,’ the firm says, ‘seems to
stem from a cultural lack of respect for blue-collar work. The presiding
conventional wisdom is that young people must earn a four-year college degree
to make a good living.’ Nearly half of HomeAdvisor survey respondents agree,
indicating that negative stereotypes and a lack of interest are challenges they
face in recruiting younger workers into the skilled labor profession.”
A variety of
educational paths are available:
“Although
the conventional path for people in the building trades—which includes
electrical, plumbing, masonry, carpentry, general contracting, landscape
contracting, a host of traditional building methods known collectively as the
preservation trades, and many related crafts such as furniture making—may once
have been to learn from an older family member, the training avenues have
multiplied. Today, they include union apprenticeships, trade schools, job
centers, two-year associate degrees from community colleges, and four-year
university programs that combine hands-on training with academic coursework.
Remarkably, the training, in some cases, is absolutely free.”
Scholarships
are available for young people with character, passion, and work ethic. One of
the most prominent is:
“The
mikeroweWORKS Foundation is a 501(c)(3) public charity that rewards people with
a passion to get trained for skilled jobs that actually exist. As CEO of the
Foundation, Mike Rowe spends a significant amount of time speaking about the
country’s dysfunctional relationship with work, highlighting the widening
skills gap, and challenging the persistent belief that a four-year degree is
automatically the best path for the most people.
“Through its
scholarship programs, including the Work Ethic Scholarship Program, the
Foundation provides financial assistance to qualified individuals with a desire
to learn a skill that is in demand. The Foundation has been instrumental in
granting more than $3 million in education for trade schools across the
country.”
Photo: http://www.metalformingmagazine.com/assets/issue/images/2016/10/Wanted/Wanted-A.jpg
Jerry De Luca is a Christian freelance writer who loves perusing dozens of interesting and informative publications. When he finds any useful info he summarizes it, taking the main points, and creates a (hopefully) helpful blog post.
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