We Need More Workers
One of the more significant causes of higher costs for houses is that in any given month there’s roughly a shortage of over 400,000 construction workers across the country. It is estimated that over the next three years Builders will need to add roughly 2.2 million new workers in order to keep up with demand.
With fewer and fewer people in the workforce wages have escalated and unless we can encourage more people to enter the trades this trend will continue.
Encourage the Trades as a Career
During a meeting of housing industry leaders in central Ohio on ways to increase our local workforce. The moderator asked the builders and associates to raise our hand if we had recommended to our children to pursue a career in any of the trades. Very few hands went up and it was an apparent that even those of us involved in the industry every day and aware of the problems with manpower we’re not recognizing the value and the importance of recommending working in the trades as a viable career path.
I believe this issue has to be dealt with on a local level builders and others involved in the construction industry need to work with schools to develop truly viable and innovative education systems that will encourage students to enter the construction industry as a career.
Promote Training
Locally the Ohio construction Academy is providing tuition free instruction for grades nine through 12 allowing students to explore construction related careers while building a solid foundation in academics. I believe programs such as this need to be expanded throughout the community to introduce more students to careers to construction.
Figure out the Border!
In addition to encouraging more people to enter the workforce we also need to look to government to develop more insightful ways to handle the immigration issue and allow for more immigrants to enter the construction work workforce. Restrictive policies are preventing very skilled and motivated people from being able to offer their services.