Writing in BUILDER, Robyn Griggs Lawrence turns a clear eye toward the skilled-labor shortage—a crisis in our industry for years now, but which has grown more acute with the increased demand brought on by the havoc of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, in Texas and Florida, respectively.
In this highly readable report, Lawrence examines why a younger generation of workers are avoiding home building as a profession. Part of it, the author contends, is that many millennials came of age during the housing downturn of 2008 and view home building as unstable, risky, and low-paying.
She continues:
Layer that negative viewpoint on top of an overall decline in the total labor force—most prevalent among young men—that the Federal Reserve says is “nearly unprecedented in the postwar experience,” and the problem becomes even more dire. Recent studies have found that an alarming number of young men are working fewer hours than previous generations and staying home to play video games instead. The number of men from age 21 to 30 who are not working or enrolled in full-time education has nearly doubled, from 8% in 2000 to 15% in 2016, and researchers from Princeton University and the University of Chicago argue that “innovations in gaming/recreational computing” explain as much as 79% of that increase.