Brad Wyant (00:00)
Welcome to management under construction. I'm Brad Wyant
Dee Davis (00:04)
And I'm Dee Davis.
Brad Wyant (00:06)
And today we're going to talk about the craft labor shortage. Before we jump into this topic, which has a lot of different facets, let's talk a little bit about our own experiences with it. So Dee, how in your career have you faced the growing craft labor shortage? How do you perceive it?
Dee Davis (00:22)
it is something that happens periodically. in the construction industry. the construction industry has a tendency to ebb and flow in about 10 year cycles, historically. Sometimes it's a little longer, sometimes it's a little shorter. But every so often as the economy moves, we see either an abundance of labor or a shortage of labor.
what I've seen especially in the last couple of years, a lot of companies not growing, but shrinking, people being laid off and good people out of work, at least for some period of time, making a shift, making a change. So there's definitely things that happen in those 10 year cycles. And it's usually historically been on the 10 year mark.
So 2010, 2020, 2030, and then sometimes we'll get a little bit of an influx. There'll be a market condition that makes it elongate a little bit. Maybe it's 15 years before we see the ebb and then it elasticates back into that 10-year cycle later.
Brad Wyant (01:36)
Well, and it's convenient than the COVID happened in 2020. That's perfect timing. For those 10 year cycles. My personal experience with labor shortages had to do with geography. There was a project I was staffed to that was in Colorado Springs. It was a remote-ish part of Colorado, a much smaller town, and a lot of the labor had to drive to the job site from South Denver or even Denver proper because there wasn't enough framing
Dee Davis (01:41)
You
Brad Wyant (02:06)
labor in Colorado Springs to sustain both our project and a couple other projects that were happening at the same time. There was another, there was a hospital going up at same time. There was a big defense project going up. And so the local labor force was just tapped by those projects. And as we went through the project, we would see not the foreman necessarily, but the journeyman spin off of the job and say to their bosses, there's other work closer to home.
I'm calling the union. I'm not driving an hour and a half each way because I'm spending so much money on gas that this is killing my bottom line. I'm not making the same money I would effectively. And it was very tough to retain personnel in that job. But that's just my own personal experience with it. We all see the labor shortage in different areas of our careers. I'm sure Dee's going to have a lot more perspective than I will on this. But the big headline here for the sake of the broader picture.
is that according to the associated builders and contractors, the US construction industry as a whole, so that includes residential, low grade commercial and very high grade commercial, faces a shortage of 439,000 workers in 2025. So as a whole, we want 439,000 more plumbers, electricians, carpenters and so on than we currently have the industry. I'm sure that some of the people listening to this podcast can say for sure, yes, there are a lot of
jobs I've been on where if we just had more people, if the company that we were working with had more framers, we'd be going faster, but we don't have the labor to come staff the job. Very tough conditions to be productive in to say, well, we could be this fast, but we're not actually gonna be this fast because we may not be able to get the people to do that work.
Dee Davis (03:44)
Yeah, what you're describing about local market economies having limited labor is a real thing. If there's a big job going on or maybe two or three big jobs going on in a given town, then you end up with this labor shortage that you're talking about. So that's a local labor shortage. In your area, in your jurisdiction that impacts all the local projects, I've been in that exact position where.
all of a sudden there's all these projects going on in the area and it's all the same type of projects pulling from the same talent pool. Now the heavy industrial and commercial type projects aren't pulling from the same labor pool as like residential. Those are two very separate and different labor pools generally. But what will happen is what you're describing and then we start looking at either not being able to go as fast as we want
We're not able to man the job the way we would prefer to man the job. We would not be able to build it as fast and with as many people as we would like to. So you have two choices. You either go as fast as you can go and you do the best you can to retain people.
because other jobs will dangle that carrot in front of them and say, hey, come over here for a little bit more money because you're then competing with all these other projects for labor. Or you have to start bringing in travelers. And we'll talk more about travelers as we get on in the podcast.
Brad Wyant (05:12)
Yeah, very interesting phenomenon there. So because of this labor shortage, what's happening as we have fewer and fewer people entering this workforce is that estimates show now by 2031. The year 2031 that is 41 % of our current workforce will have retired. So not only are we in a current shortage, but the statisticians seem to think that.
We're going to have so few people enter the workforce if they continue at the rate that they are that we're going to lose almost half of our current workers by 2031 to retirement. So some root cause analysis here. There's no one conclusive silver bullet to this problem. If there were, we would have solved by now. There would have been some solution economically speaking. But one of the narratives that I found in the research I did preparing for this podcast is that
Disturbances caused by big economic disruptions like Dee was talking about have a disproportionate impact on the construction workforce because of the training required because of the experience that you build through construction career and because of the way that that experience workforce trains the younger workforce. Many people understand that master versus apprentice program in a lot of unions and in non union circumstances where somebody
who's more experienced will train somebody who's younger and that will help the workforce grow. If let's say as in 2008, new housing starts get cut in half, if not more, and people are laid off in huge numbers, those workers find other jobs, other careers, and all things equal are more likely to want to continue in those careers rather than come back to a career that they were laid off of. Hopefully they've found
profitable career outside of construction, those that haven't probably returned to construction after the jobs return there, but some move on in another career and never returned to construction. Not only do the master level people that were training that younger workforce find other jobs, the young people who would have later become those skilled enough to train others, level workers, those 20 year career veterans, they find another career and never become
that leader who trains others so then there's more burden on the craft workforce in general to train its younger staff because there are fewer people than there would have been. So it's just slower and slower to train younger workers the more that workforce is disrupted due to that big economic shift is what one of the papers I read shows. Any thoughts on that Dee
Dee Davis (07:53)
Yeah, that makes complete sense to me. What the images that were going through my head while you were describing that was when I lived in California, what I saw a lot of is people following the work. So different areas will sometimes have different.
peaks and valleys to their workflow. So what would happen with Arizona and California all the time for many years in construction was when California was big, Arizona was slow and the opposite was true. So I saw a lot of people moving back and forth between those states. They would go to Arizona when there was a lot going on in Arizona and then they'd move back to California and they bounce back and forth between the two. I knew a lot of people that went back and forth back and forth numerous times.
Or the other thing that happens is, especially when you get into the higher tiers of work, like the pharmaceutical marketplace and stuff like that, people follow the work. There's almost never going to be enough work in one area. I mean, if you're able to get all the way through your whole career and just stay in one place and never have to follow the work, that's fabulous. I know a couple of people who've been able to do that.
but you have to be skilled at a lot of different things in order to do that. If you do one thing or two things, you have to follow the work around the country, sometimes even around the world.
Brad Wyant (09:19)
Yeah, this is just another impact of the specialization that Adam Smith talks about in the wealth of nations when you go from having one person producing five nails a day to 100 people producing 10,000 nails a day because they each do one part of the nail manufacturing process. A disruption to any of those individual specialized fields gets worse as the specialization increases and it exacerbates the problem. We see this in other specialized fields.
Another issue that I came across in my research was that predominantly the leadership on a construction site, whether they be in the trailer or on the job site, wearing tool bags have not had formal leadership training. So you see job sites where somebody that's running a thousand people and the person who is in charge of all those people started their career with a broom and.
Work their way up, which we love. That's one of the things that I love about constructions that it's a. Perfect parable for the American dream and the people can really. Go from having absolutely no skills to acquiring a ton and becoming a leader, but the amount of leadership training that individual might receive throughout their career to achieve that leadership position is a lot less than other industries like business or management or.
legal professions, other professional organizations seem to be better at training their leaders than the construction industry is generally. And that's an issue that Dee can obviously help with. She's got a ton of leadership trainings that she offers.
Dee Davis (10:52)
I think we've talked about this before another cast. The construction industry is unique in that. Almost everything we do is set up to be job costed in in very, very small, tight overhead margins. So what happens is that things like leadership training like you're talking about or any kind of training if it can't be job costed.
Nobody wants to pay for it and nobody wants to take time off of the project in order to stop working on the job that's actually making you money and is billable for a contractor and learn how to do what we do better. So it's something we have to figure out as an industry how to get better at that and how to. Slow down a little bit to go faster, which we've also talked about. We've talked about that in design. We've talked about that in.
a lot of different areas, slowing down to go faster and to be better and to actually make more money in the long run is something we need to learn how to do better in the industry.
Brad Wyant (11:49)
Absolutely, we get into this tunnel vision mindset. If I just finish this project and then you finish that project and the office is already calling the next one's coming, you need to get out that one right now. But I thought I was going to. Well, OK, I'll go and then you you jump. So it's it's tough to. Go slow to go fast, but we need to. So another big issue that I came across in my research was that a lot of entry level labor jobs.
across the economy have increased their base pay. Entry level jobs at Starbucks or an Amazon warehouse or in other manufacturing environments where no skill is needed, the pay has risen in those areas so much that they're on par with the entry level for an apprentice electrician in a lot of marketplaces. And when you compare the job of working outside on a construction site
very dangerous, very physically demanding to another physically demanding job like manufacturing or standing on your feet all day in a restaurant. And they pay the same, but one's outdoors and one's indoors and one's a lot less dangerous and one's more dangerous. People are starting to shift away from construction for those reasons. They are perceiving greater economic benefit to themselves because they get to be in a safer environment indoors as opposed to outdoors. And one of the things that
Concerns me on that front. We talked about this before we started recording is that there's a lot of near sightedness perhaps in those decisions a unskilled manufacturing environment job or an Amazon warehouse job may not have the upside potential that going to be an apprentice electrician does. If you start off in a job like that making about what your friends in Starbucks are making, but. You see the.
upside potential to go become a journeyman to go become a. foreman that person is going to be making a lot more money in 20 years than the person who's still working at Starbucks. Do you do find that there are young people that you interact with who just don't see the upside payoff of a of a long term career construction?
Dee Davis (13:59)
Well, there's an awful lot of I just want the money now mentality. And I think that's a very natural thing when you're young, I heard somebody make a comment the other day. Well, I have a good job and I'm doing okay. But I see somebody over there making a dollar more than me and it's a little bit of the grass is greener. So the conversation was something like, okay, that person working for another company over there is making a dollar more. But
you're paying next to nothing for your healthcare that your employer is providing. You're getting this benefit, that benefit, know, da da da da. That person over there might not be getting all that. They might be getting more in their paycheck or about the same in their paycheck, but are they getting all the benefits you're getting?
So it's looking at that greater picture of not just what am I getting now, but what is the total benefit that I'm getting now? And where's the potential five years, 10 years down the road?
Do you plan on being a McDonald's general manager and that's your career? Or in a couple of years, are you going to be like, wow, this job stinks? I this that's a job versus a career where you progress through. And by the time you're a journeyman, plumber, fitter, electrician, carpenter, whatever, you're making really good money and you have all these benefits that can support a family. I mean, it's a big difference.
Brad Wyant (15:25)
It is, and I think that Amazon can raise their entry level wages all they want, but the entry level wages for an Amazon worker picking boxes up and moving to another place and taping them, there's no greater level to get to there. There are a lot of jobs where there's no next level, whereas in construction, there's always a next level. If you start out,
framing houses in residential, might find yourself welding stainless steel pipe in 15 years and demanding a much higher labor rate.
Dee Davis (15:57)
or being the vice president or president of a company. To use myself as an example, I started out in this industry swinging a hammer. Now I'm self-employed and I own two companies. I know people who are far more successful than I am who started out as an electrician, as a plumber, as a carpenter, as whatever,
you can go all the way up in that trade to general foreman and then keep going. there is a lifetime worth of opportunities in the industry. Whereas, I don't know if you could say that with some of those simpler jobs.
Brad Wyant (16:35)
United Auto Workers Union wants to keep you in the plant. They don't let you go behind the scenes and start designing the automobiles and picking what markets to target. Whereas in construction, you can keep your union benefits and progress within the industry that way.
Dee Davis (16:49)
in fact one of my mentors in the industry was a union pipe fitter and he he became a project manager. He's the vice president of a huge company now. And he kept all of his benefits. He stayed in the union. He still gets all that great stuff. He'll get his union retirement in addition to whatever he gets from the company that he's with. win win
Brad Wyant (17:09)
Yeah, huge win.
we were just talking about how there's this perception about low pay, the trade off between that entry level, indoor, low skilled job that Amazon or Starbucks or other manufacturing environment versus how difficult and how hard the construction environment can be to work in. It's dangerous. We're putting
People's lives and harms away. We're dealing with dangerous chemicals. We're dealing with heavy objects. We're dealing with a place that is constantly changing as the job gets built. Things are swinging in the air all the time. It's not a controlled environment the way that a manufacturing environment is where you see the same car come down the same assembly line every day. It's different dangers every day, which is one of the bigger challenges we have as an industry.
And it's one of the sadder things about our industry that it's a lot more fatal of an industry to work in. It's a lot more dangerous than other industries.
Dee Davis (18:09)
there's definitely such a thing as job site fatalities. It happens. It's a constantly changing environment. Every task you do has different hazards associated with it. And then there's everybody around you is doing something different all the time. So sometimes the hazard doesn't come from what you're doing, but it comes from something someone else is doing near you that you don't have direct control over. So I've definitely had job site accidents.
and unfortunately a job site fatality. It's a real thing. I've lost people from the industry after big events like that because they're like, you know what? this is not okay for me. I don't want to do this anymore. It's too scary. So that's a real thing. That's a real hazard. And sometimes the way you lose people in the industry is they just decide to go do something else.
Brad Wyant (18:58)
I've had that misfortune and thankfully of losing someone out of job that I've been on, but I've read some of the history about this industry when they built the Sears tower. For instance, they had actuarial tables to look at how many people they could expect to lose over the course of building that tower. And that's a very different viewpoint on the industry than we have today. Luckily, we don't simply assume that we're going to
have a certain number of fatalities on a job. Instead, we put safety plans in place and take human life a lot more seriously than we used to in this industry to prevent death at every turn. there's a zero tolerance policy for any kind of unsafe behavior. think that, you know, I'd certainly have my own opinions on the benefits and disbenefits of the government, but one of them has been that OSHA being introduced has
reduced workplace fatalities. It's not perfect. No one thinks that, but I would certainly be on the side of the increase in safety from actuarial tables telling us how many people are going to die on a job and just estimating that into the project. We should be on the other side of that spectrum.
Dee Davis (20:11)
working in different parts of the construction industry. I've seen very different takes on that. So I started out in the industry swinging a hammer out in the field doing residential remodels and expansions and things like that. And I've bought a house that was a brand new build and at the beginning of the phases of construction. And so I got to watch the supplementary phases.
And watching what goes on on a residential project site versus what goes on on a commercial or industrial project site is substantially different. if there's anybody out there that's listening and says safety is not even a thing with what I'm doing. Well, you may not be wrong. There's parts of the construction industry where
There's no hard hats. There's no safety harnesses. you're not tying off. People are working in the dark. I've watched these guys, they're up on a roof. It's dark outside. They're not tied off. There's no fencing around the job site area. I mean, it's just, blows my mind to watch what is considered acceptable in the residential marketplace versus that would never happen.
on a commercial or an industrial job. It just wouldn't, you would get thrown off the job for doing what I see happen in these residential job sites. So there's a substantial difference. in what is acceptable in different parts of the industry. that's another thing to consider is, you you may have be more likely to get an injury or have an issue if you're working in certain parts of the marketplace versus other parts of the marketplace.
Brad Wyant (21:48)
Yeah, I got a funny story around that. got the I had the privilege of going to work with Engineers Without Borders in Malaysia for a couple weeks in the summer after I finished my masters at Stanford. And being the one person on our team that had construction experience, I knew about tie-off rules. I knew about how to make people safe. And one of the things we were going have to do was to put solar panels on a rooftop. And I said, OK.
Everyone sit down, we're going to have a couple hours where we talk about how to work safely on roof. We're to go through all these different things. We're going to learn knots. We're going to look at harnesses and how to wear them properly, how to save somebody if they're in a harness and whatever. And we get to Malaysia and we're driving past construction sites where people are working in bare feet. Okay, this is a different environment. We get out to the remote jungle community that we're going to work with who had just won their court case against their federal government.
preserve their tribal land that they were entitled to by the nation's laws.
They all looked at us so funny when I had people up there wearing harnesses and tying off. They were like, what are you idiot Americans doing? They were up there with these rubber and cloth shoes, like climbing poles to hammer something with one hand and all this crazy stuff. I they were very, very skilled people. was impressed by the things they did. And clearly the people who are that skilled maybe don't need.
Safety gear the way that, but then again.
Dee Davis (23:13)
They survived long enough to do it.
Brad Wyant (23:15)
Exactly.
People that lasted in the industry in their part of the world are the ones who didn't need the safety gear. The people who are a little bit clumsier. I know I'm a clumsy guy didn't make it. Didn't. So there's there's different structures and folks, different cultures out there. But I certainly believe in being a little bit safer than we have in the past. Maybe some might say that safety culture has gone too far in the construction industry. would have a hard time to disagreeing with that in certain circumstances. But.
for the most part, I'm happier to have people tying off on roofs than not.
Dee Davis (23:47)
well as somebody who saw somebody not tied on a roof and then went back later and found out that they fell off and died. Yeah, I'm a big proponent of tying off when it's appropriate. But it's funny that you bring up that story in Malaysia. I'll never forget I was on vacation in Mexico one time and we were driving through this area. And for the life of me, I couldn't figure out if they were building the building or demoing it.
I mean, was just rebar sticking out everywhere in these wild angle. like, I truly could not figure out if they were building it or demolishing it. But yes, there were barefoot people in there with brooms just like cleaning up at the end of the day in bare feet. and it's funny because I actually have dreams now and then that I'm on a job site and I don't have any shoes. And I think it's because I saw that in Mexico.
And the idea of it is just terrifying to me walking around a job site with no shoes on. I actually occasionally will have dreams where I, my gosh, I don't have my boots. Not only do I not have my boots, I don't have any shoes at all. I don't even have flip-flops, I nothing. And I'm trying to navigate through the job site without hurting myself. We've come a long way.
Brad Wyant (25:01)
We absolutely have. Thank you, Dee, for giving us all the stress dreams that we're going to have tonight. That's awesome.
Dee Davis (25:07)
Yeah, I dare you to not have that dream tonight.
Brad Wyant (25:11)
So another one of the perceptions that people have around the construction industry that's true is that it's physically demanding, whereas other environments that are more controlled are able to build in systems that make the work less physically demanding. The first that comes to my mind is the auto industry. If you're putting in the same console on a car every time, they're going to build the assembly plant so that there's a big arm and aperture that comes in.
and helps you place that dashboard in the car. Whereas on a job site, there is no such luxury. We have people running around and if you need help lifting something, you either work harder or you have somebody come along and help you lift it. There's no specialized equipment that's going to be used in that way. It's a very physically demanding job. Lifting pipe all day. I've seen people very, very fit. think the fittest
People I've ever seen have been the people I see on job sites, even though they have back problems. the most in shape people I know.
Dee Davis (26:13)
Yeah, there's a lot to be said for team lifting and you know, there's that whole macho thing that goes on. I can do it. I can do it. And I've caught even my husband doing it back in the day when he was when he was working pipe, that is too big for you to carry by yourself. You need help. being tiny like I am, I'm very short. A lot of times when somebody is a lot taller than me, it's not helpful to have somebody that's substantially shorter than you picking up the other end because
The metrics of it don't really work out very well. But we do have some portable lifting devices that can help us out, but getting people sometimes to use them versus just manhandle it is tough. It goes back to that culture of I can do it, I can do it. And then, of course, my son is an electrician and in his 30s has serious back problems already.
probably from doing some stupid things when he was a young apprentice.
Brad Wyant (27:08)
Yeah, there's a lot of culture that we need to work on there of lifting properly, asking for help, using the tools that you have at your disposal does not make you a weak person, does not make you less of an electrician, less of a carpenter, less of a man. We had the old podcast on masculinity on that. Another one that people perceive about constructions that requires a lot of skill. There's a lot of athleticism and dexterity required. I think that's also a true perception.
If you're clumsy like me, you're going to have a harder time threading pipe or hanging drywall or even doing finished carpentry, which the people that do that, the things that the dexterity those guys have to be able to tell to a 64th of an inch. And then it's, it's, there's a lot of skill that you have to build to be able to make a career in construction pay off, which is represented by the way that being an apprentice is not very economically incentivized. There's not a ton of money in being apprenticed, but
Once you acquire all those skills, once you get better at your trade, all of a sudden it's very profitable to be an electrician. a lot of people, when they're looking at careers to choose, will see the penalties of specializing, will see the long road ahead, and will see the skill they have to build and say, you know what? I'm not that passionate about my career. I just want something that pays my bills. I don't know what my bills are going to be tomorrow. I don't care. I just want a job so that can go do the things I want to do in life.
And in that sense, I think that you also see a lot of you see a lot more ambitious people entering the trades in terms of how they want their life to play out. Then you do other unskilled, at least at the entry level, careers, because you have to want more out of your career to go choose construction than you would want at another Starbucks, Amazon warehouse type career.
Dee Davis (29:00)
the opportunities to make that money. And I've heard of people in the industry, especially people that are very specialized, like specialized welding or something like that. They'll work for half the year and kick it for half the year. You you work your tail off and get a bunch of overtime and whatever, and then just take a few months off.
There's people that that's how they choose to live and that is awesome if that's your jam. I have personally break out in a cold sweat if I go for too long without working. I don't really know how to do that. I'm not good at it, but I love the idea of it. I wish I could be that laid back and do that, but the work can be a little inconsistent. So sometimes you'll have an abundance of work and an abundance of opportunity.
to make as much money as you really want to. And then there'll be times when it gets a little bit slow or in between projects where it may be a little less consistent. Not everybody likes that. It's not necessarily a standard 40 hour a week paycheck all the time. You might have 50, 60 hours one week and you might have 20 hours another week. That can happen and not a lot of people like that.
Brad Wyant (30:16)
Well, certainly I think you see that in a few other careers. In some ways you see it in sales. If you're a commissioned salesperson, although those jobs are dwindling, you see it in any other job where things come and go and you're much more the arbiter of your own fate. And hairdressing is actually the one that comes to mind in some cities. Hairdressers can have busy seasons and quiet seasons. I had a friend whose wife was a hairdresser and she would make at her peak.
much more money than I've ever made in a month to put it politely.
Those are broad. Cyclical factors that. Persist in the construction industry, regardless of what generations evolve, let's talk about our current circumstances now and what the construction industry faces based on the current economy. This was a very interesting statistic defined.
For every dollar we currently spend on technical education in this country. So that could be high school programs and shop. That could be paid apprenticeships, things of that nature. And that totals to $20 billion per year. We spend six times that much on college and programs that get kids into college as a federal government. So $120 billion is spent by the federal government on college and
helping kids get into college, the programs, the inner city schools offering test prep, that kind of thing. When that gets funded by the federal government, that's what's going on. But only a third of jobs in the United States currently require a college degree. So if the economy feels like it's been flooded with college educated graduates who really aren't sure what career they want, that could be one big factor here is that we might be overspending.
on getting kids to college and underspending on technical education. How do you react to that, Dee? What do you think?
Dee Davis (32:06)
Oh, I 100 % think that's exactly what's happened. There was a big push, and I'm trying to remember about what year it was, maybe around 2010, 2015. There was this huge push about we ought to get everybody into college. Everybody needs a college degree. And there was all this government money that went into these programs that you're talking about.
Technical trades have always been, I would say, minimized. this just reminded me of something. I was working with the Sheet Metal Local, and I was trying to figure out how I could help to get more people into the trade coming out of high school. And so I called the Sheet Metal Local, and I was talking to their rep, and I said,
Why are you guys not in high schools? When you go to career night at your local high school, why isn't there different trades having tables there, the different unions? I mean, come on, you guys, like, let's get it together. And they flat told me that they are not allowed in there. The school not permitting the trades to go into the schools in that particular area.
Brad Wyant (33:14)
Wow.
Dee Davis (33:22)
They've been trying to get in and recruit kids coming out of high school into the trades and the schools wouldn't let them in.
Brad Wyant (33:31)
Was a taxpayer that that outrages me because that's a public school. You can't bar a group from. I guess I don't know enough about I I shouldn't speak out of turn, but it seems to me that that. Isn't fair that that's not that there ought to be a law against that kind of.
Dee Davis (33:49)
There
ought to be a law. Well, I think what it was was that they only wanted colleges coming in and college path careers. So I've been invited to come into all kinds of schools and talk to kids about, careers and sustainability, careers in engineering, all that kind of stuff. But nobody ever asked me to come in and talk about careers in the trades No one's ever asked me to talk about that. And it was
eye-opening and upsetting at the same time because that is leaving so many opportunities, so many kids out in the cold. There are kids who have no interest in going to college. There's kids who are going to go to college try it for a little while and be like, you know what, this isn't what I want to do. Or I don't even know what I want to be when I grow up. That was me at that age. I had no idea what I wanted to do.
going into a trade, a lot of kids don't ever think of it. They don't even know it's an option or that it's a good option unless they come from a construction family. And that's where you see so much of the recruitment coming in is, well, my dad, my grandfather, my mom, my aunt was this, that, or the other thing. And so now you've got second, third, fourth generation people in the industry. I've worked for companies where
my gosh, we had cousins and aunts and uncles, just like everybody was related to somebody. That's my little construction joke, by the way, is that everybody's eyes are a little too close. a little, everybody's kind of related to somebody, it seems like. But that joke comes from a real place in that there's so many people related to so many other people in the industry. And that's where the recruitment's coming from. It's not coming at the school level where it should be.
I think it's changing a little bit, but not fast enough.
Brad Wyant (35:43)
was just going to say you see articles every now and then on the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times saying that more and more of Gen Z, the current generation of high schoolers are choosing trades because they're seeing their elders, their older brothers and sisters go to high school, go to college, and then not have a good paying job coming out of college. There are more art history majors behind the desk of your local Starbucks than there are in
Any museums around the country there just too many people that want to do the museum job. For that for that to be feasible so. The the shift in perception is occurring but it's not occurring quickly according to a survey I read in preparation for this podcast. Construction as an industry is perceived as the second least desirable among millennials and Gen Z and the article I read said that one of the big factors in that was that that that group.
millennials and Gen Z want flexible work hours. They don't want to have to show up at the same time and leave at the same time every day. They want to be able to have more flexibility in their lives. And like you're talking about earlier, working only 20 hours a week, you only get paid 20 hours a week. There are a lot of people that work salary jobs that are able to work 20 hours this week, 60 hours that week and get paid for the full 40 and nobody's the wiser. Everyone's cool with it. So maybe as we
try to find solutions to this shortcoming in our industry. We have to find ways to allow people to introduce more flexibility to take different days off for vacations or work more flexibly. But that becomes very challenging to run a job site that way. Yes, sir, I want to go hike this mountain today. Well, we were planning on having you here for the concrete pour. And if we don't have you, we're not going to get to pour today. yeah, sorry. Doesn't really work. There's there's there's give and take there. But
If that's a big thing with this generation is this flexibility issue, then maybe there's there's something to be done that maybe there's an innovation that we can come up with. The numbers bear out what we're talking about. I just wanted to briefly give these and then let Dee give her thoughts that youth generation in construction there specifically between 16 and 24 year olds. We had a million people that fit that category in construction in 2003. Million people who are between 16 and 24.
that year, 1.7 million in construction in 2006, between 16 and 24, but then 547,000, so just about half a million people in 2010. And we have still not returned to pre 2008 levels of youth in construction because of that shock issue we were talking about earlier, because of these perceptions, because of the safety issue. lot of issues contribute to that probably.
What are your thoughts on that? there ways to introduce flexibility in the trades so that we can retain more of this millennial and Gen Z talent?
Dee Davis (38:40)
I have given this some thought over the years. I've read a few articles and I'm just going to tell the story I laughed when I read it, but it did give me enough pause to really think about it. There was an article that somebody had written that said, yeah, I had a kid come in and this was somebody in a union. This kid came in expressing some interest in a union construction job.
and brought his mom to the interview with him, which that's kind of a whole nother piece of the conversation, not the piece I'm focusing on today. But.
The mom said to the union, can my son have more flexible hours? He's not really a morning person. He doesn't want to come to work until about 10 o'clock in the morning. And you know, why mom's there and why mom's having this conversation, I guess, a totally different, totally different topic. Let's just pretend the kid said it. and at first I just laughed and I thought that that is the most ridiculous story I've ever heard.
And then I thought, what would it look like if we tried to figure out how to give people more flexible working schedules? I got to tell you, it sounds like a nightmare. I can't figure it out. if you're on a mega job, like a big, big billions of dollars I have seen jobs like that have shifts.
I've had jobs that have run around the clock 24 hours a day. have people on site working. got people, doing pass-offs on different shifts. I've done it. They're still defined shifts. maybe you have somebody leave once in a while, cause they have to leave early for something or they have to come late, but that disrupts everything. And it, it really messes with stuff.
and trying to say like, we're going to give people the flexibility. And a construction is not something you can do from home. You're talking about trade labor. You have to be at the site. So how do you do that and give that kind of flexibility? I don't know. The most you could hope for is maybe reduced work days.
specific shift, but maybe everybody's working four days.
Brad Wyant (41:02)
A lot of guys come out of the work saying, I want to work four tens. I don't want to work five eights. I want to have my Fridays, especially in the summer. And a lot of job sites have tried to accommodate that I've been on, but it never ends up working out the way people want it to because one trade wants it. Another trade can't swing it. So all of sudden, when you're needing to do plumbing work with electrical work, then it doesn't work if the electricians aren't there on Fridays and the plumbers were counting on having them there on Friday to further their work.
Dee Davis (41:31)
Yeah, I think you'd have to do it as an entire job site level and just be like, here's the schedule. We're going to work four tens instead of five eights and just say, that's it. The whole job's doing it. And when you got there's so many moving parts on a construction site, literally and figuratively that trying to individualize that work experience, it causes a big ruckus. Even when at the trailer level,
somebody that's saying, I'm only going to work four days a week and I'm not going to be there on this day, or I'm going to take three days off in the middle of a week. They play a key role and there's not a lot of backup. It's really hard to accommodate that kind of stuff, which is some of the problem that we have in construction is that there's long hours and demanding schedules and the project schedule is the project schedule.
And we're all working to meet it. And when you've got 150 people trying to do 150 different things, I don't know how you do that.
Brad Wyant (42:31)
Yeah, as the saying goes poop rolls downhill and unfortunately at the bottom of the hill end up being our craft workforce and when we've run out of other options than to. Just throw more bodies at the problem than to work overtime. They are the people who end up footing that bill for us and I think that becomes the conversation of us as. The people in the office trying to not let that happen. It's not just your job site that you're.
penalizing when you do that. It's not just that individual workforce. It's the whole perception of this industry as one that is constantly behind, as one that is constantly having people work overtime when they didn't expect to, that's constantly forcing its people to miss kids football games that we need to think more broadly about as we try to make better decisions. It's not just the cost that you realize in that one moment. It's the cost that we realize as an industry as a whole.
Dee Davis (43:26)
I wanna talk about travel labor for a minute. Travel labor is when you have a localized area with a lot going on, sometimes you'll bring in traveler labor, which is people of the same...
the same trade, the same skill level, and you're bringing them from a different area. I had this situation when I was doing a job in San Diego, California. I had
about 80 % travelers on my job because there was so much work going on in that area. I couldn't get enough labor. So I started bringing in travelers from across the country. I brought in people from San Francisco. back East, New York, all these areas with higher labor rates. Well, I still have to pay them their labor rate. So this is an expensive option. I got to pay them their elevated labor rate. Plus I have to fly them.
and their stuff or pay them to drive them and their stuff out. I've got to put them up somewhere. I've got to pay them some kind of per diem for, food and living expenses and whatever. So this is a block of time that you're hiring travelers for. And oftentimes they're also going to say, I'm not coming unless you guarantee me overtime and you pay me an additional
wage on top of my regular rate. for example, if the regular rate was $80 an hour and they might say, I can work here locally for $80 an hour. If you want me to come there, you got to pay me $100 an hour plus per diem plus all my travel expenses plus plus plus. So that's what happens when you try to solve your labor problems with travel labor.
It only works when you can do it with big blocks of time. If you're trying to accommodate what we're talking about with giving people flexibility by having extra labor about, it's a very expensive option and it's not something you're gonna be able to call somebody in for the day. We're not talking about labor ready here. You're not picking up somebody who's gonna sweep floors. You're talking about skilled labor. So that's an option that is a go-to option.
on a long-term solution for a project, but it is not a go-to option to solve a temporary problem like I have somebody out on vacation. have somebody who only wants to work a limited work schedule and you're going to be working periodically. That's a very difficult problem to solve. I don't know what the answer is. I have been thinking about it for about a year and I haven't come up with any solutions. If anybody listening to the cast has any suggestions as to how to deal with that on a trade level.
I'd love to hear it. Maybe there's a creative solution out there I haven't thought of yet.
Brad Wyant (46:08)
Me too. I would love to hear that solution if somebody has it. I think I want to end the podcast by giving another statistic here of thousands of firms surveyed according to the ABC, the Associated Building Contractors. 86 % of firms have increased their base pay in the past year as of 2022. So inflation has hit the construction industry. People are trying to keep up. At least the argument could be made that we haven't increased labor rates enough. I think
That's an argument that probably won't fall on deaf ears a lot of places, but that's a big part of this equation that is trying to be solved for. And it's going to continue to be one of the big questions in this industry for a long time of how do we solve this labor shortage gap? How do we upskill young people quickly to experience the great benefits of construction without losing that millennial Gen Z attention span? I'm guilty of the attention spans of anybody else.
Those of you near my age out there who have a longer attention span than mine, good for you, but I certainly get where people are coming from when they say, pay me. I don't want more money later. I want the money now. It's tough to make the argument to somebody that in 10 years, this is really gonna work out. A lot of people my age are thinking, in 10 years, are we gonna have a country? In 10 years, am I gonna be here? What do you mean 10 years? I need as much as I can get this second. It's a very disrupted.
unstable time. So that's that's also hurting the industry.
Dee Davis (47:34)
Yeah, for sure. I think lots of people are feeling disrupted and unstable right now in the marketplace. It's been a weird couple of years in construction for sure. You know, here we are in the middle of 2025 for most construction markets. This is a pretty quiet year so far. There's a couple of
market sectors of construction that are very, very busy right now. Data centers and microchip plants are both exploding and just can't get enough people. Everybody else, pretty quiet in general. It was also pretty quiet last year everybody's just kind of saying, okay, well, I don't know what the rest of 2025 is going to bring. I personally have not seen it be this quiet, this far.
into the year before. So there's been a lot going on in the last year. I think the minimum wage being raised substantially in the last couple of years has created some of the problem that you talked about, Brad, used to be able to go in and say, Hey, as a first year apprentice, you're going to be making so much more than all your other friends doing all their other jobs.
Maybe depending on where you are, depending on what trade it is, maybe you can still say that, maybe you can't. So that minimum wage coming up to meet these higher things causes stress in the industries that have traditionally been very good careers now. And it causes us to say, well, you have to look at, where are you going to be as a second or third year apprentice or a journeyman and dangle that carrot out a little bit longer.
The great thing about unions for the worker is that every few years they're negotiating new contracts. And so they're looking at that. And so it will catch itself up in the next few years. These unions will go out, they'll renegotiate their contracts based on the current market conditions. Some of the unions are really, really good at those negotiation skills and have secured fantastic packages for their people.
Some not as much, but in general, It's a good option for anybody out there who is looking for a good, stable, long-term paying job. Get as many skills as you can get. That's the other thing. When I was working with lot of plumbers, I was like, gotta learn to weld, you gotta learn to solder, you gotta learn to do med gas, gotta learn to do all the things so that you are valuable.
later when the market gets a little jiggy like it is right now. If you can go work at a data center, if you can go work at a microchip plant, you're golden if you have those skills to learn how to work in the different marketplaces. and we need to get into those high schools that I think that is changing a lot. I've seen a lot more.
skilled trades in high schools, talking to high school students, we need to do, I'll advocate for a lot more of that.
Brad Wyant (50:32)
agreed well put Dee.
Dee Davis (50:33)
Thanks everybody. We'll talk to you next time.
Brad Wyant (50:36)
See you soon.
