Alarm bells rung by contractors and others in the construction trades regarding the current worker shortage should be heard by educators and civic leaders, and efforts to fill the employee pipeline require action beyond those of the building industry alone. 

That’s not to suggest that the construction worker shortage isn’t already on the radar of others, but coordinated efforts to attract, train, and retain the next generation of skilled labor are more crucial now than any time in the past decade. 

On the national level, the Associated General Contractors of America and others consistently had been warning of a looming construction worker shortage for years, due to an aging workforce and a shortage of people entering the field. During the past year or two, calls for action have become more urgent. 

At the local level, real estate observers have attributed a decline in new-home starts in part to a lack of available subcontractors and other skilled workers. As the Journal reported in its Aug. 3 edition, Spokane County and the cities of Spokane and Spokane Valley issued building permits for 611 new homes in the first half of 2017, down from 652 during the year-earlier period. And while overall sales through the Spokane Multiple Listing Service are up 6.5 percent so far this year, the number of new homes sold through the MLS declined by 14 percent during the first half of the year. 

Other factors attributed to that decrease, including a reported shortage of available home lots, but many in the homebuilding industry concurred that more new homes would be coming out of the ground if more construction workers were available to build them. 

The silver lining is that the tight labor market is due to a strong job market in which the unemployment rate continues to tick downward—the jobless rate in Spokane County came in at 5 percent last month—and the term full employment is bandied about in some circles. And a strong demand for housing has placed a spotlight on this labor issue. 

Contractors bemoaned a shortage in quality workers during the real estate boom of the mid-2000s, and that shortage dissipated rapidly as the housing market slumped at the onset of the Great Recession. AGC has said that many people who left the industry at that time were slow to return, or never did. 

Another slowdown in the housing market might curb some of the demand for more construction workers. However, while an eventual ebb in activity is inevitable, no concrete indicators that one is imminent have surfaced just yet. 

Construction careers provide good wages. Those who enter specialty fields often work as subcontractors and own their own businesses, an opportunity not afforded to professionals in every field. Attracting more people to work in that field would boost more than just the construction industry itself. 

Focused workforce development is important across all segments of the economy. In the construction trades, it’s become critical.