The construction industry is America's backbone, but it is facing a labor shortage that is extreme in an already tight market for workers across the country.
The U.S. economy's post-Covid growth spurt has come amid one very big problem: lack of workers for jobs across sectors as they bounce back from the pandemic and now attempt to grow amid tighter financial conditions. The labor market, where job openings have reached as high as two for each available worker, is a force within the inflation that continues to challenge companies looking to hire skilled workers. Nowhere has the tight labor market been more extreme than in construction.
The labor challenges come at a time when the construction sector is facing other supply headwinds that arose since the pandemic. "In cases where you're building a big hospital project, as an example, you might have locked in the timeline that you expected to complete something by back in 2019 and now be suffering the consequences of the materials disruptions that we're seeing," Davidson said.
Turmail cited an aging labor force as a reason for the continued shortage. Workers retire at earlier ages since it is such a physically demanding industry, and the labor force skews older. Construction firms have been incentivizing workers to delay their retirement and work as trainers or teachers. "Firms are realizing that no one's gonna solve the problem but themselves. So, they're building stronger relationships with high school programs, even middle school programs. They're finding ways to get students out to construction job sites to expose them to career opportunities," Turmail said.
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