Hitting the nail on the head: The construction labor shortage is a crisis

The housing crisis in Massachusetts is acute, experts say. Governor Maura Healey’s housing plan estimates at least 220,000 additional homes and apartments need to be built throughout the Commonwealth in the next decade to end the crisis. But who is going to build them?

The construction labor shortage has been growing for about two decades, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. Studies vary, but most estimates project that the United States needs to add around half a million people to the construction workforce for each of the next few years in order to meet housing demand.

Making matters worse, for every five people who retire from construction jobs, only two new people join the field, according to Joe Landers, executive officer of the Homebuilders and Remodelers Association of Massachusetts. It’s one of the major drivers of increasing construction costs. Companies have to pay workers higher wages, but that’s not all.

In 1994, the average age of a person working in construction was 36.8 years, according to the National Center for Construction Education and Research. By 2030, it is expected to be over 46.

“We have the Home Builders Institute, which recruits and trains younger people for careers in the trades,” Landers said. “We’re going to need around 2.1 million more workers over the course of the next three years. The whole industry is aging out. And that’s a real problem. We’re not filling that pipeline.”

With fewer people to do the work, projects take more time, which drives up costs.

“In addition to driving up labor costs across the board, we estimate that the labor shortage is adding 2.3 months to the time it takes to build a single-family unit,” Landers said. “That increases developers’ carrying costs somewhere between $4,000 and $5,000 per house just because of the labor shortage.”

In addition, contractors have to deal with the cost increases associated with tariffs and immigrant workers’ fears of being swept up and deported by the government.

“There’s always been a Canadian lumber duty of about 14.7 percent, but it jumped to 35 percent overnight and some guys lost their shirts,” Landers said. “And one of our members on Cape Cod told me he had whole crews of framers not show up for work because they were afraid of ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement].”

He is pessimistic about the Massachusetts construction industry’s ability to build 220,000 homes in the next 10 years.

“It’s just not going to happen,” he said. “Not because there isn’t a want to do it. It’s just that, with increased regulations slowing things down, the lack of available labor is going to make it awfully difficult to achieve that. The estimate is that 70 percent of the laborers are expected to retire by 2030. You can’t build 220,000 homes with no laborers.”

Bert Durand is the communications director for the North Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters. He said what the construction industry sees as a crisis is a golden opportunity young people should at least consider.

He said a high school graduate who enters the Carpenters Union Apprentice Program will spend 10 percent of their time in classroom instruction and the rest of their workweek learning in the field while earning a paycheck. At the end of those four years, they’ll be a journeyman carpenter earning an average of $77,00 to more than $100,000 annually and have no college debt. Plus, at the end of their career they’ll have a pension, something vanishingly rare in today’s workforce.

“A typical college graduate won’t catch up, or it’ll take them a long time to catch up to what someone in their trades is earning from the beginning of their career,” Durand said. “And college isn’t for everyone. Just like a career in the trades might not be for everyone.”

Durand said that construction workers who belong to a union typically earn higher wages and get more benefits than those who don’t. For those reasons, the labor shortage is worse in non-union construction. Still, his organization has a comprehensive recruiting program.

“We go out to vocational schools and general high schools and talk to students, guidance counselors, and teachers about the different aspects of the trade and why that might be attractive to a student,” he said. “We talk about why they might be suited for a career in carpentry rather than doing something else, you know, sales or college or restaurant work, something like that. We maintain relationships with folks that are advising young people. We try to talk to young people as much as possible. We have open houses at our training centers in our union halls on a regular basis, too.”

Durand said he doesn’t discourage people from going to college. Some of his members work in the field for a time and pursue college degrees in order to move into the office. Still, it isn’t easy.

“The pressure to reduce the labor costs in the construction industry and the attempt to weaken unions over time has really made it difficult for the construction industry to confidently look forward to a future with an ample supply of really skilled craftspeople,” he said.