Labor Shortages and the Metropolitan Angle
Politics are local; real estate obviously is local, and the rate of economic recovery varies by locale. Talk to builders in Orange County, Dallas-Fort Worth, and Florida, and they’ll tell you their businesses are furiously busy. But then there’s the builder from Aurora, Ill., who says his crews are still remodeling because he hasn’t had a new house to build since 2010.
The unemployment rate just for the construction trades (residential and nonresidential) hovers near 10 percent, so not everyone is working. Yet plenty of builders in those boom markets say they could start more projects if only they could find more skilled labor.
The media is rife with stories about frame carpenters, plumbers, and other tradesmen who are driving trucks, installing telecommunications, or running their own business. Many apparently are making more money with less headaches, so they’re not coming back to the trades. Neither are skilled undocumented immigrants any time soon, thanks to stricter E-verify rules for employers.
Inevitably, the labor shortage will call for equipping a new pool of hires with skills. That means training. Yet some circles blame employers for creating their own woes because they refuse to pay higher wages and for training. There are plenty of other targets for finger pointing: policies that prioritize college at the expense of vocational programs, scarce public funds for job training, and the notion that young people aren’t drawn to construction jobs. Counting on help from the federal or state fronts to address any of those factors is a long shot because of partisan gridlock.
But one possible approach could be local.
In their book “The Metropolitan Revolution,” two Brookings Institution fellows write that rather than wait for Washington or the states to get their acts together, local networks of elected officials, philanthropists, universities, businesses, and community groups are taking on tough problems. For example, in Northeast Ohio coalitions from four cities combined resources to invent tooling and production innovations and revitalize manufacturing in that region. Houston used a settlement house as a gateway to integrate immigrants into the community and upgrade their job skills.
Perhaps builder associations, contractors, school districts, and others can band together to develop a local approach for bridging the skills gap in their markets. The Home Builders Association of Michigan is pushing for more flexibility in high school curriculums to boost participation in vocational programs. Such efforts won’t fill the talent gap overnight, but it could yield a richer pool of candidates from which to hire. Either that, or figure out a way to build houses using low-skilled workers in the field.
