Hurricane casts shadow over construction labor survey
Construction labor survey results sent out by Associated General Contractors of America came at an ominous time, considering Hurricane Harvey’s impact in Houston and along the Gulf Coast.
Harvey’s repercussions will hit here and elsewhere far inland in waves, but likely most keenly felt by homebuilders rather than commercial contractors.
Wave 1 will be before you know it, when trades people and others rush to find work elsewhere while construction is at a standstill on the Gulf, one homebuilder told me.
Wave 2 will be later, when repair work and new construction take off in the hurricane damage zone — and high demand pushes pay up and workers rush back south to take advantage of it.
So there’s a timely backdrop for the AGCAutodesk labor survey, which comes after years of a construction slowdown that crimped the labor force so severely that 70 percent of respondents reported chronic difficulty filling hourly craft positions such as painters, plasterers, carpenters, concrete workers, bricklayers and the like.
The AGC said firms are having to change the way they operate, recruit and pay workers, but the longterm solutions are greater investment in career and technical education.
Parallels to the patch
That should sound familiar in the Oklahoma oil patch to a generation of energy executives who saw labor wiped out by the 1980s bust and went wanting during the rebound after the turn of the millennium until policymakers and the schools started to catch up.
“In the short-term, fewer firms will be able to bid on construction projects if they are concerned they will not have enough workers to meet demand,” AGC CEO Stephen Sandherr said in a news release. “Over the long term, either construction firms will find a way to do more with fewer workers or public officials will take steps to encourage more people to pursue careers in construction.”
The labor shortage comes as construction continues to rebound from the Great Recession. The AGC reported that construction employment expanded in 258 out of 358 metro areas it tracks between July 2016 and July 2017.
Of the respondents, most firms said they were making a special effort to recruit and retain veterans (79 percent); women (70 percent) and African Americans (64 percent). Half reported increasing base pay rates for craft workers. Twenty percent said they have improved employee benefits for craft workers and 24 percent report they are providing incentives and bonuses to attract workers.
Also: 46 percent said they were doing more in-house training to cope with workforce shortages; 47 percent said they were increasing overtime hours; and 41 percent said they were using more subcontractors.
Interestingly, and oddly, apparently only a fraction of AGC members, 1,608, responded to the survey; AGC’s website says it has 26,000 member firms, including 6,500 general contractors, 9,000 specialty firms, and 10,500 suppliers and service providers.
Just 20 of about 230 AGC members in Oklahoma responded to the survey.
Maybe they were busy working, or recruiting.
Nonetheless, Sandherr called on federal, state and local officials to act on the association’s Workforce Development Plan, particularly to increase funding for career and technical education.