In JLC‘s sister publication, Builder, John McManus writes an important article that focuses on America’s misguided bias towards college, and directs us towards how the industry might better solve the skilled-labor gap.
While he may be underemphasizing the need for higher wages and better benefits as a path to attracting new talent, it does underlie the discussion when he notes that the demise of skilled labor is not a recent occurrence: “Our current lack of skilled people in the building trades goes back at least 30 years, to when employers began choosing less and less expensive laborers to complete construction tasks … ” Moreover, the myths and fallacies he centers on are a good beginning to amending the errors in social perception and policy that have led us to where we are today.
[There are] a million young American adults a year–ages somewhere between 18 and 22–who don’t fall into the “everybody’s going to college to get better paying white collar jobs” category you hear as a refrain so often to explain why construction is alarmingly short on skilled workers.
Sometimes, things are not what they seem to be. And sometimes, it takes recognition that we’ve been operating under false assumptions before we can act with the focus and energy to begin resolving a crisis.