SRE_0720

16 SAY YOU SAW IT IN SUBURBAN July 20, 2021 – August 23, 2021
By Zach Wichter
BANKRATE.COM
I’m breaking the fourth
wall right off the bat here
to say that I have a little
personal experience with
this topic. My dad is an
independent residential
electrician on Long Island,
New York, so I’ve been
around the building trades
my whole life. For as long
as I can remember, I’ve
been hearing things like
“there are no kids on these
job sites anymore,” and
more recently, “even in my
60s, I’m the youngest person
on the job.” (He’s not
nearly as curmudgeonly
as I’m making him sound,
I promise.)
But he’s not wrong, either.
Labor shortages in
the building trades are
a well-documented issue.
The Bureau of Labor
Statistics (BLS) reported
that as of April there were
357,000 unfilled construction
jobs. Some experts
believe that could be a
significant undercount
because BLS bases its
numbers on payroll data,
and many contractors are
self-employed, so they
don’t maintain a payroll
MAINE
The building trades have a labor
shortage. That means higher prices
PHOTO | TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE
Carpenter Shane Bentley, 20, of Rochester helps
to rough in a house under new construction in
Shelby Township.
roster. NAHB estimated
that as of 2019, 2.4 million
construction workers —
roughly 22 percent of the
labor force, a record low
rate for the industry —
were self-employed.
With coronavirus encouraging
more homeowners
to take on remodeling
projects and shifting
homebuyer tastes in the
real estate market, the
homebuilding industry is
under particular pressure
with such a depleted labor
force. While stakeholders
across the industry are
working to address the
ebbing tide of craftspeople,
the longstanding trend of
hands-on jobs struggling
to attract new entrants is
a difficult one to reverse.
There’s no single, easy-topin-down
cause of the labor
shortage in construction.
Most industry watchers,
however, said that there
are two major factors that
— although they don’t explain
the trend entirely —
are major contributors to
the employment gap.
The first is how construction
jobs are perceived in
our increasingly high-tech
world.
“It’s been an issue for
decades, trying to attract
enough people into the industry,”
said Paul Emrath,
vice president for survey
and housing policy research
at the National Association
of Home Builders (NAHB).
Many parents encourage
their children to pursue
white collar jobs over concerns
about what construction
work might entail.
“We spent a generation
or two, a couple decades at
least, suggesting that —
or at least the perception
is — it’s not a good career
path,” said Ed Brady, president
of Home Builders Institute
(HBI). “We, as a society,
were steering young
people to four-year universities
to get their degrees.”
The other key factor that
turns people off from construction
jobs is the cyclical
nature of the industry.
“People were scared away
during the housing downturn
when we weren’t
building anything, and a lot
of them were scared away
permanently,” Emrath said.
The result is that more
contractors are leaving the
field than are joining it.
“We’re losing five to every
two new tradespeople into
the industry,” Brady said.
This trend is bad news
for consumers, because
it generally translates to
higher prices.
“It definitely can drive
up the price of the house
because it extends the
time of completion for it
to go on the market,” said
Greg Zick, assistant vice
president for workforce development
at NAHB.
“We’re losing that craftsman,
that plumber who
can rough in a house in two
days because they’ve been
doing it for 30 years. Now
we’re bringing in someone
new and they’re going to
take five days instead,”
Brady added. More time
means a higher price tag,
which is only compounded
by rising material costs.