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.
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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.
Most construction jobs are not unionized like yours.
I refused to do a job because it was unsafe, and mysteriously found my hours cut to almost nothing shortly after. From 60+ hr weeks to <10.
All the more reason to go join a union
Yep 😊👍 … worked many job sites, never bumped into OSHA. Maybe I was supposed to report the unsafe work environment / employer? shrug
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
from $40K to $50K
I don’t know what construction wkrs make but I think this should be a LOT higher. 50K starting and topping out around 100k.
If you go union those rares are a lot higher
Perhaps, those are the BLS figures from 2023.
Interesting, Thanks.
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.
This is why I never really went for the trades. It always seemed like winning the lottery to get an apprenticeship, at least in a large city.
It’s really not. If there’s a long wait then you apply for the apprenticeship and while you wait ask if they have any other training programs, most of them do, or go work non union while you wait to get in. Gaining experience will help you move up the list and you’ll be starting in no time. I had absolutely 0 construction experience and waited less than a year to start in the 3rd largest city in our state.
Depends on the trade. I’ve worked with a bunch in my area.
Elevators, building engineers? You gotta know somebody. Laborers union? You ain’t Latino, you ain’t getting in. Electricians, welders? You don’t have to know someone, but it sure helps if you do. Also if you’re white.
Oh, and No Girls Allowed, so there goes 50% of your potential recruits.
Well I guess since you have all the answers, everyone should go home and just not fucking try. I mean, what’s the point? Cryophilia here said everything is hopeless and lost. I mean, he personally applied to all of these labor unions and was given these responses. What chance do we have?
It is what it is, I don’t see how sticking your head in the sand will help anything.
You’re the one talking about how hopeless trying to work in the trades is, which it isn’t. I had no experience, and knew no members before I applied. When I have come across unsafe conditions on a site I’ve always gotten it fixed.
You said you complained about unsafe conditions, to who? The non union contractor? Or did you talk to osha? When they cut your hours did you file for under employment? Did you do anything to actually fix the conditions for the other workers? Or did you just shrug and move on?
One of us ran into struggles, dealt with them and improved, the other cries about how it’s not even worth trying. Who’s head is in the sand?
Running a union is the most lucrative way though.
If a union boss gets a shitload of money to make sure their workers get fair wages, fine by me.
You do realize you have to be a member and respected by the local in order to become the leader, right? You say it like the president of a union wasn’t a jw before he got elected. Our current local executive team were all working in the field less than a year ago.
Ex construction worker here. I did HVAC installation for 6 years and worked as an apprentice electrician for two. This is in California(SoCal;southern California). I didn’t get any health insurance benefits. Also I wasn’t in a union of any kind. The work is demanding; the pay was ok. There’s a lot of toxic Mother Fuckers in construction, besides your boss I mean. I also felt that there wasn’t many trade schools to go to and they were not easy to find. I went to get a certificate in an electrician course and found out that the certificate ( which I didn’t even get, because I didn’t show up on the last day (came to get it multiple times after with no luck)) that they were giving out didn’t even mean shit really. I always felt there’s not enough clear information on how to climb the ladder if you wanted to get accredited education in construction. Unless You went to LA TRADE TECH college (Los Angeles) . Or if you didn’t get a job at LADWP, your skills and knowledge didn’t offer You any good jobs. I worked private sector jobs and got my knowledge from; (basically) an online school ( penn foster ) .
Anyways 🤨 I just always felt that the state didn’t provide enough information on how to climb the ladder in your career, where to go get certification that was accredited ETC.
We really need some bad ass trade schools (out here) that aren’t for profit. And clear information on how to get licensed in different trades.
That’s my two cents
Edit; let me add this; to me it feels like the government can be shortcited. They didn’t invest in training 😕 new generation of trade workers IMHO ; and now they’re like; “oh shit!”
For profit; “everything”, makes life shit. (Pardon my French and also the terrible use of English grammar)
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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.
The issue is the culture
You can say that again…
Especially where I’m from, there’s a lot of corruption in construction. A lot of them will steal stuff and not even feel bad about it, proud even.
And this corruption goes all the way to the top at the provincial government level.
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.
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Bingo
OK. So housing just went up in price then too. Luckily no one has been complaining about the cost of home prices!
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LOL this is bloody hilarious. The skill free labor that a burger flipper provides is exactly reflected in their low wages. So you seemingly want housing prices to go up because you think they are somehow artificially deflated already… but you can’t see that simply waving a magic wand to increase wages for a skill free job is simply artificially inflating that job’s worth.
The disconnect with reality is strong with this one.
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It’s hilarious that you think you actually have a “solution” there when all you just created is inflation. Skill free wages go up, construction wages go up, house prices go up. Just print more money… what could go wrong with doing that?!
You don’t seem to understand what’s going on in the world. Everyone would be a lot better off if you stopped posting a for awhile and took some time to educate yourself.
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.
You are foolishly equating a boring job with one that requires skill. If one can be trained in a job in an hour or two, that’s a skill free job and is paid accordingly.
Only people who lack any skills believe in unskilled labor
I challenge you to be a “burger flipper” for a year and tell me how easy it is.
