Wow, the entire article doesn't mention once what the average wage for entry-level construction workers is. That's probably a huge part of the puzzle -- to omit that seems almost intentionally misleading, or at least bad journalism.<p>Also, construction is a job that's notoriously hard on your body. You can't count on being able to do it into your 60s like office work, and one bad accident can end your career in construction (or just flat out end you). And the work itself is hard. Pay needs to be higher than other jobs to compensate for this. I know I'd rather be, say, a Starbucks barista than a construction worker, even if the latter paid a little bit more.
What's the endgame for construction workers? Everyone can't move into management. Many people's bodies can't handle that kind of manual labor for 40 years, and even if they could construction jobs tend to be insecure.<p>If you want people to make those trade offs you have to pay more.<p>This kind of rhetoric from companies drives me nuts. They push to remove regulations, but when the free market says they have to pay more for labor, suddenly it's not the free market driving up wages, it's a worker shortage. Now we need the government to step in and fix it. You see it most obviously with tech companies pushing for STEM in public schools and the push for more H-1Bs.
I'd love to work construction. But every time I've mentioned it to my family they tell me about how it will destroy my knees and back, I'll lose fingers, get hearing damage, head injuries, and the pay is crap compared to the risk.<p>If there was decent workplace safety (my hometown is infamous for it's poor safety standards), and a good pension program where you're expected to want to quit and do something else after 10 years or so, before your body is ruined, then I'd be all about it.
Many of these news stories about labour shortages could alternatively be summarized as "Company expects perpetual huge profits and people to continue to work for next to nothing"
These types of jobs eventually burn out your body.<p>You used to be able to buy a house and grow a family on these wages, and eventually retire. With that no longer being the case, why would anyone with choice choose this option?
I've been wondering about the long term sustainability of the rise of service jobs in the developed world. If you can work in finance, law, medicine, or tech that's great. Those are all high skill, high paying jobs. Unfortunately, most people aren't cut out for them, largely due to genetic and environmental factors that they have no control over. So what is the rest of the workforce supposed to do? Work in restaurants and other low-skill, low-paying service jobs?<p>That doesn't seem sustainable long term. I worry that by losing goods-producing jobs like manufacturing and construction we are creating a long-term problem where people who can't produce high value services end up living an impoverished life. To some extent you could address this problem by making immigration easier which would help create more low-labor cost, goods-producing jobs, which would in-turn lead to more low-skill service jobs.
> generally well-paid [1]<p>Three seconds on google suggests that they make <40k in my area, typically. That's definitely <i>not</i> well paid, especially for a job that's fickle and physically demanding. Hell, that's barely above minimum wage (I'm in a $15/hr area, minimum wage is $32k) - I can get an office job tomorrow paying close to the same with basically no effort.<p>As usual, whenever someone blames labor for labor shortages, just look at the wages. If you pay less than a waiter earns with tips while demanding more out of your workers, don't expect people to be lining up at the door. Same goes for farm labor. Same goes for teachers. Same goes for truckers. And so on.<p>[1] - taken from the Non-WSJ alternative in the comments below
Non-WSJ Alternative (seems to be an affiliated summary): <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/young-people-are-shunning-construction-jobsand-its-hurting-the-housing-market-2018-07-31" rel="nofollow">https://www.marketwatch.com/story/young-people-are-shunning-...</a>
I love all these "Young people don't want $job_type any more". And then go on to talk about how the jobs don't pay enough, or aren't attracting talent because it's not interesting.<p>Over the past couple of decades the percentage of young people getting degrees has swelled, we've been encouraging everyone to get a degree. Did we expect people to remain in low paying jobs when they can do something else? Those student loans payments aren't making themselves.
The funny thing is, growing up, construction is awe-inspiring.<p>In my last position, I worked across the street from where they were putting up two buildings. We'd gawk over how brave they must be to be up that high on the rafters.
This seems to me primarily about the wages versus cost of living in the places where construction demand is high. I would also point to this as a death spiral for a housing bubble.<p>The article mentions labor commuting from Sacramento to SF where the wages are higher, thus driving up prices in Sacramento due to lack of supply. That kind of domino effect eventually makes it so SF can't get labor because the labor has shifted to live 90' outside of Sacramento and commute there instead. At some point wages do have to go up, driving up costs further in a vicious cycle.<p>I don't know when but I believe another broad housing market collapse is coming.
Why would they? You've spent the last 30 years telling them not to do those jobs, devaluing them with globalization and de-unionizing them to make sure those jobs don't create any kind of sustainable lifestyle for the people that do them. Someone on HN a while back gave some good advice: whenever you see "people won't do X job", append in your mind the qualifier "for Y underpaid salary/benefits package".