Where did the construction workers go?
Where did the construction workers go?
The gist of it: with each passing decade there's a growing shortage of construction laborers, resulting in large wait times for housing to be built. Some analysts wonder why the key demographic isn't showing up.
I've seen a few articles in the past few years about young men supposedly checking out of society and work, I wonder if there is a connection between that and this article here because young men tend to be the prime demographic for working this job.
Companies need to pay their workers better.
I can't speak to the general problem, but I can tell you why I left construction and manual labour more generally.
A lot of the work is still as damaging to the body as it was in 1930.
Toxic coworkers enabled and even encouraged by psychopathic supervisors.
Safety is not only not built in to procedures, but actively mocked and even deliberately worked around, even when doing so slows things down.
And all that for less than double minimum wage for experienced workers when it used to be easily triple minimum wage to start.
Exactly. It's not worth the strain on the body for the pay.
I'm still am apprentice, and I already make more than I ever did in my first career (20 years as a chef). Journeyman rates are over $40/ hour and once you included insurance and retirement theyre around $80/ hour. Oh and were among the lower paid locals in our state.
I walked off a jobsite because they failed to provide us with safe conditions, had the safety officer on site that day, had the local union officers follow up, contractors apologized fixed the conditions and paid me for my missed time.
If you let them joke about it, they will. If you make them follow it, they will. Safety starts and ends with you brother.
Spending 5 minutes on Google shows that the number of construction workers is at all time highs.
It's just that a hot economy requires even more labour.
My 2 cents, the economy could use a rebalancing by raising wages and reducing profits a bit.
If salaries of construction workers get raised from $40K to $50K, then the number of openings will go down and the remaining workers can focus on the more important work while getting a better wage.
reducing profits a bit
This man wants shareholders to starve! How can you provide for your family if you can only afford a 60' yacht instead of 70'??
What a fucking socialist piece of shit they are, if they wanted to be paid well they should have thought of that when being born a poor
Each generation tells the next that college is needed even more these days, unless you want to be a trash collector or construction worker. That, along with the getting worse pay and body damaging labor, adds up fast.
It is exactly this. We're trying to recruit hard too, which is working. My local can take about 50 apprentices a year. Between job fairs and school presentations we had 700 apply this year, which is awesome, but way more than we can handle at once.
There is great money to be made in the trades, and joining a union is the absolute best way to do it.
All of the workers shortages always come down to the same things. Money for the workers which have been sacrificed for the business to be as profitable as other businesses. I know that for something like construction this can only be done by skimping on quality or screwing over workers.
Why not both!? I can maximize my profits by producing the skimpiest, leakiest, shittiest micro condos (charged out at the most luxurious of prices) and also shaft my overworked, overextended, undersupported workforce (preferably foriegn, marginalized and/or vulnerable)! /s
Maybe they need to get paid more.
No that couldn’t be it! Why wouldn’t someone want to work at a job that tears your body up so hard that many die within a couple years if retiring?
Most companies pay pretty good where I am. The issue is the culture, as someone else pointed out. Especially in Residential...
As far as "It's hard on the body", it really isn't, if the management, and your co-workers support a safe environment, and provide what you need. Again, that comes down to the culture.
This is one of the many reasons why Unions should be priority fucking one, in any workplace.
No one seems to be paying attention to the fact that technology has added a lot of new career fields over the last few decades.
If you add a new career field like software engineer or fiber optics service technician and your work force stays relatively the same size then you will divide up your workforce over a greater number of professions. Leaving less workers to be carpenters, plumbers and electricians.
Similar to why women started entering the workforce when they did. The technology created new jobs that needed more people.
Please consider updating the post URL to link to the actual content providers: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/06/1158576556/where-did-the-workers-go-construction-jobs-are-plentiful-but-workers-are-scarce
Ok I think it's fixed
You're the best, thanks!
Why should men go into construction which is a job that requires skill and actually working hard, when CA is now going to be paying skill-less fast food workers $20/hr?
Doing a quick search shows that even within CA the average pay rate is just $23/hr for construction workers and yet that job requires much more skill than someone flipping a burger.
There is no such thing as unskilled labor. I promise you, without training, you would fail miserably when asked to crank out big macs all day for a living. Just like you would if you were tasked for any other "unskilled labor" that you haven't been trained to do. That means there is skill to it.
Unskilled labor is a myth created to justify paying human beings less than a living wage to line rich men's pockets.
I challenge you to be a “burger flipper” for a year and tell me how easy it is.