Construction job openings jumped by 129,000 in February, but hirings declined 18,000. And although money has begun flowing in to build roads, bridges and transit systems, as a new report by NPR notes, “all that infrastructure money won’t do any good if there aren’t enough people qualified to do the work.”
“The construction industry faces a dire labor shortage,” the report stated.
That labor shortage crisis is not a new phenomenon for wood floor pros. Recent data show the situation has worsened in many ways post-pandemic, however. The number of people actively applying for construction jobs online plunged approximately 40% between 2019 and 2020 “and has been flat ever since,” according to the report.
The U.S.’s $1 trillion infrastructure bill, signed in 2021, dedicated funds for public works projects but allocated nothing for training new construction workers to take over.
"What this legislation does is put the emphasis on getting firms to support and hire people coming through apprenticeship programs," Ken Simonson of AGC told NPR. "But it's not directly helping to create those programs."
A wave of retirements has also impacted the number of teachers available to train the next generation.
"We had so many people ready to retire, and we didn't have a good pipeline of people coming in," Nathan Barry, dean of career and technical education at Metropolitan Community College in Omaha, Neb., told NPR.
The infrastructure bill also has requirements to fulfill a quota of minority and women workers, “which is difficult to do in an industry that’s been traditionally dominated by white men,” the report noted.
The full report can be found here.
