The Skilled Labor Shortage in the U.S.

Shrinking interest in construction work among young people is a huge concern for Fred Humphreys, the president and CEO of the Home Builders Institute, the workforce development arm of the National Association of Home Builders.

“If we don’t attract our share of young people who want to make a career in our industry, we’re going to be in a desperate situation,” Humphreys says.

With a large number of aging workers, many contractors are worried about who will replace them when retirement comes.

What labor shortage?
Talk of a labor shortage is nothing new. For years, construction workers have been retiring faster than young workers can replace them. According to Occupational Health & Safety Magazine, more than 40 percent of construction workers are baby boomers, the oldest of whom turn 65 in 2011. The magazine also points out that construction workers are more prone to injuries and generally retire at an earlier age than other workers, which could eventually compound the problem.

Currently, 14 percent of employers in the skilled trades say they’re having difficulty filling positions, a steep drop from 44 percent in 2006, according to a 2010 talent shortage survey by Manpower, a global workforce solutions provider. Still, in the United States, skilled trades topped the list of talent shortages, above nurses, doctors and technicians. That could spell out difficulty down the road for replacing bricklayers, cabinetmakers and other people in specialized skills.

A potential brain drain
Eric Gearhart, the development & research director at SkillsUSA, a national job training program, says, “We've seen traditional construction programs either eliminated or replaced by IT-related programs in high schools all across the country. Masonry is a prime example.”

Humphreys agrees, saying high schools started shutting down vocational programs more than 10 years ago. Humphreys believes that parents and guidance counselors should advise students on vocational and technical programs in addition to traditional four-year college programs.

“High school counselors think everybody should go to college, but college isn’t appropriate for a lot of people,” he says.

Unlike many industries, though, construction can’t be exported, and people like Humphreys want to reverse the trend now so that there will still be people around to build homes 10 years from now.

A perception problem
Joe Pacifico, owner of Long Island, N.Y.-based Coastal Enterprises, a general contracting company, thinks that young people may have simply lost interest in the challenging job of construction. He says he used to see more people working their way up the ladder.

“A lot of guys started as laborers, became junior assistants, and then became carpenters or framers,” Pacifico says, “but those guys are getting older, and I don’t see new blood coming in.”

If construction sometimes gets a bad rap as a low-paying or dangerous career, negative PR could partly be to blame. Some states are already trying to improve the industry’s image through initiatives like "Go Build Alabama," a campaign to recruit trade workers through public service announcements and newspaper inserts. The Alabama Construction Recruitment Institute (ACRI), the organization behind the campaign, claims that for every person who becomes a trade worker, three or four are retiring.

Small-biz solutions
Training programs don’t pop up overnight, so Humphreys urges contractors to get involved in their communities in order to ensure a sufficient pool of talent in the future. Here’s how:

• Contact community training programs—Local employers can influence career and technical education programs in various ways, says Gearhart, by defending the value of trade education to local school boards and policy/budget authorities, being a guest speaker or giving demonstrations at their place of business.

• Attend career days—“A lot of our builders now go to career day presentations at high schools and talk about what it’s like to be a builder,” says Humphreys.

• Help re-establish closed programs—Humphreys recommends meeting with deans and encouraging them to re-establish programs that high schools or colleges have shut down.

• Inform entry-level workers of potential funding sources—The Construction Education Foundation offers scholarships, and some programs offer paid on-the-job training. Also, Pell Grants can help defray costs in college programs.
• Get involved in job-shadowing programs—In Texas, high school students built brick walls and safety supports for steel frames for the Army to use to test munitions through a job preparation program called SkillsUSA. Through similar programs nationwide, local employers can offer career development opportunities with job shadowing, internships and apprenticeships, Gearhart says.